Fall of Eden - Dawn of a New Age
Self-released
Metalcore / Melodic Death Metal
11 songs (56:10)
Release year: 2007
Fall of Eden
Reviewed by Dylan
Remember when Decapitated grabbed the death metal world by the horns with their surprisingly mature debut Winds of Creation? One of the more surprising aspects of that album was the extremely young age of the band at the time of its creation. Now, Fall of Eden shares no remote amount of musical similarity to Decapitated in any aspect, but one thing this band happens to have in common with those Polish death masters is being able to compile a fair debut effort before most of the members are able to legally drink. With the oldest member having lived for around two decades, Fall of Eden have been able to already put out a relatively mature effort, though still don’t have enough of that “it” element to make them stand out from the countless melodic death / metalcore bands springing up across the U.S.

Citing influences such as In Flames, Iron Maiden, and Norma Jean (this is more of an occasional vocal influence than anything), Fall of Eden’s sound is certainly nothing unfamiliar. Starting out with a melancholic piano intro, the album gets rolling with Crown of Thorns. This track pretty much sums up what the album is about. Swedish melodies dancing around a grumbling bass and galloping drum attack. Vocally, the attack consists of mostly of throaty screeches, with the occasional ‘core singing style thrown in to give songs a bit of saccharine melody. Solos are scattered throughout the album, and are well played, just not spellbinding by any means. All of the straightforward tracks sound very similar to one another, though Valhalla serves as a nice, short acoustic piece to give the album some variety. Battle of the Gods also deserves mention for being a really, really long track (15 minutes) that drags itself along way past its welcome. Sound bites of warriors fighting in the background accompany a quiet acoustic melody and a slow chugging riff for the first six minutes, with a relatively fast solo noodling its way around the mid-section, only to have the last third of the song to be ended by another boring riff and more swords clashing.

For a band that boasts a triple guitar attack, the overall sound is pretty thin. Once again, the production of this album is average at best, nothing quite huge, nothing quite raw, but nothing quite ball-grabbing either. There is nothing on Dawn of a New Age that falls into the realm of extreme metal. The tempos usually rarely find themselves climbing above mid-pace. The band ends up sounding like a watered-down version of all their influences. They don’t have the immediate catchiness of In Flames, the guitar wizardry of Children of Bodom, nor the driving power of Arch Enemy, but they give it a good shot. At this point in time, this style of metal is so over done that a young band has to find some sort of niche in order to stick out and gain attention. Fall of Eden has yet to find such a niche. If the band could add a lot more creativity and add some more aggression into their songwriting, they have the skill to make something interesting. Dawn of a New Age just doesn’t contain enough metallic prowess to raise its head above the pack.
Killing Songs :
Dylan quoted 55 / 100
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