Throes of Dawn – The Great Fleet of Echoes

Releasedate: 12-03-2010; Label: Firebox
By: Sabine van Gameren

Throes of Dawn is one of those melancholic metal bands from Finland. Vaasa to be precise. When hearing that you can assume that they know how to create brilliant melodies in a slow and dark surrounding but with enough place to occasionally burst. Throes of Dawn is one of those bands, with a rich history of previous released albums. Quicksilver clouds (2004), Binding of the spirit (2000), Dreams of the black earth (1998), Pakkasherra (1997). Throes of Dawn was founded back in 1994 by Herni Koivula and Jani Heinola.

On their new album “The Great Fleet of Echoes” emotional dark melancholic metal can be heard. The synths which play an important role in the music of Throes of Dawn giving it that special sound. The music is not the fast metal nor aggressive, it is rather mid-paced and build around great melody lines and occasional clean vocals accompanied with great atmospheres. The lyrics are about emotions, solitude and despair. Their music reminds a little of a mixture between the dark emotional Katatonia and the atomospheres from Swallow the Sun.

With “The Great Fleet of Echoes” the band delivers an album that shows their skills to build something special from each track, while all tracks sound different. There are tracks that are more dark and melancholic like “Blue Dead Skies” and “Enthropy”. Besides these there are some tracks that have more power to them like “velvet Chokehold” which might be one of my favourites of the album together with “Lethe”.

Tracklist: 01. Entropy 02. Ignition of the Grey Sky 03. Velvet Chokehold 04. Soft Whispers of the Chemical Sun 05. Chloroform 06. Slow Motion 07. We Have Ways to Hurt You 08. Lethe 09. The Great Fleet of Echoes 10. Blue Dead Skies