Screamo meets Metalcore - "Old Mornings Dawn" Review (0%)
Summoning, a screamo band with defkore elements, is quite possibly the most horrible excuse for a 'black metal' band ever created. I've never been this offended by music ever in my life (maybe a gross hyperbole - I've heard Watain).
You know this 'symphonic black metal' album is going to be bad just from the very beginning. Immediately, you are slammed with a derivative Korn riff reminiscent of later day Roadrunner angst rock, followed by a clean break that is made 'heavy' by turning the distortion pedal on again in a manner eerily reminiscent of 2000s angsty soft/heavy whine rock. Aka metalcore. It then goes back to that one Korn riff as synths belch out a completely plastic and artificial advertisement jingle that I could swear I heard on a late night TV ad.
That's not 'symphonic', it's random and nonsensical. This album fails on every level, not really knowing what it wants to accomplish and jumping between disparate parts at random intervals that suggests a group of posers sat in a room and copy/pasted together random parts from unrelated genres with no rhyme or reason.
This is not going to be a good album, but you throw in the 'progressive symphonic metal' marketing banter and you could fool the masses of insecure metalheads into believing this is the best thing since Neraines and Burzum.
As with most concept albums, the concept to this album is pretty stupid. It feels like what would happen if Marvel and Disney were fighting for the rights to adapt the Lord of the Rings movies to comic books and roller coasters. A plastic and commercial prostitution of Tokien's work.
Screamo meets Metalcore
The same crybaby In Flames-esque vocals influenced by screamo and metalcore are used here. They sound angsty and like something which wouldn't be out of place on a Slipknot release.
Musically, the band is content with playing the same estrogen inducing crap they were peddling out in the mid-90s, only this time we have 'breakdowns' and goth inspired cleanly sung vocal parts accompanying it. Everything about this release is stuck in this one overly cheerful emotional state that sounds passive, artificial, and sugar coated - sounding like Nightwish without the power metal or 'heavy' parts playing the happiest parts from their favorite Megaman X soundtracks.
The lyrics to this album are dismally pathetic, coming off like a Starbucks regular rewording of Tolkien's work by giving them an unhealthy dose of emo and goth narcissism while Bring Me The Horizon members stand in the background offering advice on how to make it all sound gayer.
All of this paints a picture of a band that never had anything worth expressing, but decided to throw together an album after hearing some mid 90s mellow-deaf, going to a My Dying Bride concert and taking some guitar lessons expecting to get rewarded for it.
If you want symphonic black metal music that actually has lasting value, conviction, and doesn't pretend by hiding uneventful crap in a 67 minute displays of randomness, pick up the second Graveland or Demonecromancy's debut.
Either way, avoid this IQ lowering, trend hopping, metalcore inspired Summoning vapidity.
Old Mornings Dawn score: 0/100.
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