Dawnbringer - Night of the Hammer (2014)

Night of the Hammer is not a complete mellowing out of the style that Dawnbringer had explored with the two albums before it, but it's for sure a more comfortable and subdued slab of melodic heavy metal. The thing is, Chris and Scott brought the RIFFs with them, and this has a plethora of meaty, laid back chord and tasteful melodies that help to complement some of the best vocal structures and chorus lines they've had. The cover art here is quite different, just a photo of a guy staring out across some farmland or plain, with a silo or something off in the distance? With a hammer, of course. I often wondered if this is supposed to be the same figure from In Sickness and in Dreams, just captured from a different angle, with a weapon this time...perhaps a little bit of conceptual connection there.

In fact, this album has a heavy air of melancholy to it, which also begs that comparison, even though the style here is FAR removed from the surging melo-black/death of their formative years. Whereas the last two discs before this one were defined by ambition and redemption, Night of the Hammer is sad and self-reflective, with lyrics to match. It's got tasty, mid-paced rockers like "Alien", but also a lot of slower, sad heavy metal tunes like "Nobody There", "Hands of Death" and "Damn You", some of which, like the last, are definitely flirting more with a pure doom metal aesthetic, albeit unique with the little atmospheric guitars and Chris's vocal style. Speaking of which, he's dropped some of that gruffer edge for something more piercing and melodic, and it's pretty awesome since he's clearly becoming a more confident and effective singer (in this and other bands). The guitars sound smooth, some of the cleanest tone of the band's career, and most accessible; the drums as well. The songwriting in general is just as refined as Nucleus or Into the Lair of the Sun God, but the focus is much more grounded and personal...

That is, until the final three tracks of the album, which heard the band starting to 'fuck around' with a number of different style. These aren't deal breakers, but they definitely leech the record of some of its emotional weight. "Not Your Night" is a throwback to their more extreme metal days, with a blast beat and breathy, harsher vocals recalling In Sickness and in Dreams. "Funeral Child" is a Mercyful Fate and King Diamond tribute, and a pretty good one, but it's just something you don't expect at all in context with the rest of the new material here. The falsetto had me laughing, but I guess they had done the one song in the past that sounded like 80s/Painkiller Judas Priest, so I guess I can't be too shocked they could pull it off...and weirdly, the end of the tune goes right back into the style present on the rest of the record, which makes it even stranger. The finale, "Crawling Off to Die" does fit the record the most of these three but it's definitely got a feel of electrified folk balladry to it, and vocals that are more like a Pink Floyd vibe. None of these tunes are bad at all, in fact they're all catchy, but I just don't think they serve Night of the Hammer as a whole, and I always found them distracting. Otherwise, this is another compelling milestone on the band's journey, a shade of melancholy to disperse some of the Sun God's gleaming.

Verdict: Win [8/10]