Accursed Dawn – Manifest Damnation (The Creation Affect)

Accursed Dawn – Manifest Damnation (The Creation Affect) / 2005 Pop Faction / 8 Tracks / http://www.accurseddawn.com / http://www.popfaction.com / Reviewed 15 May 2005

Accursed Dawn plays a brand of speed/death metal that is fairly common, using chunky, screamed out vocals coupled with the fastest playing of instruments humanely possible. In fact, some of the double bass that is laid down during “Conquests of a Dying Culture” is so fast that the sound is blurred to the point that all it sounds like is just one continuous noise. The decision to play fast I can understand, but the mystique of the double-bass is by and large lost when one cannot make out exactly what Switzer is trying to do with the drums. The second track, “Last Requiem for the Storm” has a slowed-down tempo to it that really allows the members of Accursed Dawn to shine. Where nuance had largely been given up for the ability to play as fast as humanely possible, Accursed Dawn really begin to shine not with their break-neck pace but rather their specific guitar noodling and spot-on drumming.

The instrumental majesty of “Euphony to the Night Treader” is almost cursed from the onset considering the lead-in to the meat of the track suffers from a high amount of repetition. Still, after this hurdle the promised land of an epic, far-flung track is opened to the listener. The continual noise of the double-bass comes back in a minor form during “The Thunder Swarm” but seems to be explained and contextualized a hell of a lot better than the first go around. I mean, swarms have that same exact style of buzzing that the drum-noises make, and this is coupled with the sludge-rock (Kyuss, Corrosion of Conformity) of the mid-nineties to come up with something new. The two differing sounds that issue forth on”The Breath that Enkindles Insurrection” provides listeners with yet another glimpse of the band as actually cognizant of their audience, a knowledge which explains the very pit-friendly guitar riff half-way through the track.

There is no mistaking Accursed Dawn’s disc as being a brutal, tear your innards out type of metal. Still, there are moments during this disc (Flight from Serpent Wings, the aforementioned slowness in Last Requiem for the Storm) that the band sets down their speed and really allows individuals to see their skills as musicians. This is not to say that the speed of tracks like “Triumphs of a Dying Breed” are done in a bad way, but with this speed individuals cannot discern the work that is done putting together the tracks in a coherent way.

Top Tracks: Triumphs of a Dying Breed, Last Requiem For The Storm

Rating: 5.8/10