Dawn
Slaughtersun (Crown Of The Triarchy)

Anyone convinced that 'Storm Of The Light's Bane' represents the pinnacle of Swedish black metal should give a listen to this album by Dawn, a semi-unknown band that, like others, has suffered from competition with Dissection, a group that rose to fame also due to crimes committed by its leader Jon Nodtveidt, who was later imprisoned for eleven years.

"Slaughtersun" (1998) is an INCREDIBLE album, I would say perfect in every note, and deserves to be placed in the pantheon of classics among the great records of Burzum, Mayhem, Graveland, Mutiilation, and Judas Iscariot. A recent reissue has put this and some previous works back in circulation, transitional works towards the masterpiece but already of excellent level.

In the seven tracks that make up the album, we find a successful blend of those elements that have characterized the last ten years of the Swedish scene, roughly divided by critics into two communicating schools: the Black-Death school (worthily represented by Dissection and Necrophobic) and the Melodic Black school (of various Dark Funeral, Marduk, and Setherial). From the first, Dawn probably takes the attitude, less "caricatured" and extremist than that of Swedish Black, focusing on a decadent imagery that has more in common with Death than with the true Satanist universe; besides the lyrical-cultural cues, the presence of some passages on the edge with death, fast and characterized by numerous tempo changes, pauses, and very elaborate riffing is notable.

On the other hand, Dawn remains firmly rooted in that Swedish black metal line forged by Marduk and Dark Funeral, built on icy but melodic sounds, especially in the riff, with a significant presence of choruses, easily recognizable structures but never trivial and always fast and annihilating drum tempos.

Starting from these coordinates the band evolves these elements creating a personal sound, exalted by the crystal-clear production that gives it a depth hard to find elsewhere: "Slaughtersun" is like a raging river, built on melodic riffs, focused on long and articulated chapters (an average of eight minutes), set in a decadent, twilight atmosphere. An omnipresent sense of unease reigns supreme among the notes and melodies of the tracks. As previously mentioned, the lyrical universe is very distanced from the Swedish one, generally superficial and harmless amid invocations to Satan and descriptions of war events.

It could thus be rightly said that the Light is the theme around which the conception of Dawn revolves: the sun rising from the sea in the morning and diving back in the evening symbolizes the eternal renewal of life between highs and lows, the condemnation to live every moment of it, knowing that tomorrow the sun will return above our heads: if the day always begins grandly with the sunrise you can be sure that every evening that bright star will slowly drown in the sea, this is the only certainty. Against this backdrop of eternal and alternating nature stands the universe of Dawn: the picture is that of a humanity that struggles every day to defend its ideas, drag forward its dignity, achieve its goals; it is also the fresco of a dying world: everything here is grandiose, like beautiful hopes, and everything ultimately collapses miserably.

The Light therefore represents at the same time the hope of the day that is born and the disillusionment of the day that ends, the colors of the melodies and the shadow of black metal, like Presence, the Good, like Absence, the Evil within each of us.
It certainly should be noted how this decadence takes on fascinating tones through the notes of Dawn: a very melancholic taste for melody characterizes all the songs. The album primarily presents a diptych like "The Knell And the World"/"Falcula" that best unfolds the potential of the album: tight rhythms, guitars that weave melodic and biting passages together, a desperate voice, hard to describe, marked.

But this scheme finds endless variations, as in the case of "The Aphelion Deserts", which adds original neo-classical textures to the black/death base, giving the track an even darker flavor, yet always expressed very regally, without smudges. Recommended. Easy to listen to.