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The Argent Dawn: A blank eternity
27/01/10 || Wooderson
Right from the start I can already tell there isn’t anything here that’s going to require an in depth listening experience as it’s all pretty much paint-by-numbers modern metal. You have your growly vocals and your your chugga-chugga percussion inspired guitar tone and your syncopated rhythms. What more could you possibly want? Probably not much if you shop at Hot Topic, have “MySpace” hair and are generally mad at the world. The unfortunate thing for these dudes is that I don’t fit that description and I expect more.
The guitarists do supply a good amount of of tremolo picking which I guess is showing off their death metal influences but it’s too bad a lot of those riffs all eventually lead to some mediocre metalcore parts. Don’t get me wrong, there is definitely more metal here than your average metalcore band but when they slow it down, it just doesn’t hold my interest. While not the most interesting player, the drummer does sound fairly tight and I would suppose he has to be to follow along with all of those stop/start riffs. The vocals are decent and fall into a nice midrange growl that on occasion leads to some higher end rasps which sound great. I can’t really comment on the lyrics but according to some info I found, all of their songs are related to the “World of Warcraft” and “Halo” games. I’m sure this is a positive selling point for some people but for myself, this means fuck all.
Their bio states that they have added a third guitarist to add something different and give them more variety within their music. Well….where the fuck is he? There is some nice harmonizing happening on some of the death metal riffs but it’s still pretty standard. If you’re going to go with having three guitarists I should be hearing things you’re not going to find in most metal bands and unfortunately that is not the case here. Take a band like Electro Quarterterstaff. Yes, I know they are a different style so don’t bitch to me about that. My point is they have three guitarists and it’s evident in their songwriting they take full advantage of this by not following any typical formula.
Now, I’m sure it sounds like I’m not enjoying this in the least but that is not necessarily true. Overall it’s fairly heavy which is always good, they have some decent musicianship skills and probably the most important fact they have going for them is they are a young band. For their first first release, it’s a decent effort and I can’t help but think they are only going to improve with time.
- Information
- Released: 2010
- Label: Rising Records
- Website: The Argent Dawn MySpace
- Band
- Jamie Harrison: vocals
- Jake Lawrence: guitars
- Tom Scobie: guitars
- Grant Anthony: bass
- James Burke: drums
- Tracklist
- 01. A Blank Eternity
- 02. Carving our Path
- 03. The End
- 04. Soul Infection
- 05. Earth Angel
- 06. Veil of Disgust
- 07. World of Hate
- 08. Shadow of Intent
- 09. Monotonous Anguish
- 10. Shwatguns
