When a band wants to sound modern but are pretty much out of own ideas, here's the result. Changing from a melodic death metal band to a modern metal group is nothing new these days, and Finland's Tracedawn is another victim of changes. At least so if you do not think modern equals marvellous.

'Lizard Dusk' is the band's third full-length album, and the last one before the split. Pop and metalcore elements began to appear on the previous one, and this one is filled with them. Almost all the time. If you want them, you got them! But if you're like me, who think both pop metal and metalcore got old right after they were invented, this does not have much to offer. Now I do not mean momentary strokes of genius, like for example Throne Of Chaos or Devin Townsend have offered, but generic imitation and "let's make easy money" type mentality. And every now and then this album sounds so badly like a money grab effort, sadly. Well, they got position number 43 on weekly list of most sold records here in Finland, which means a (few) thousand copies I think.

Guys have their history with brutal death metal and grindcore (Lithuria, De Lirium's Order), so they wanted to try something else. Very much understandable. Many rhythms have stop-and-go guitars and bass, and drums with non-constant bass drum tread: loads of this kind of twitching metalcore styles. You've been warned. I've never got into them, and they often annoy me. They got old very bloody fast when they first emerged into metal music! The drums do not sound triggered, which is for the benefit. The bass guitar follows guitars and kick drums closely, and is therefore left somewhat into obscurity.

This album is not lacking on playing deparments. The guitars sound technical without feeling arduous. The riffs include rather simplistic palm muted stuff, but also busy and swift finger-runs up and down fretboards. I hear similarities with post 'Natural Born Chaos' (2002) Soilwork, Amoral and aforemention TOC. At times, Tracedawn managed to shove out some great riffs, like the one that starts on 20-second mark on 'Breed Insane', and the first one on 'Machine'. Brilliant! Guitar solos are something that even Dream Theater's John Petrucci could put on his works. Yes, they are technical, but also one can hear music theory in them. But then again, this album isn't about cave man principle, of course.

The vocals have been shared by two members. Ex-Amoral growler Niko Kalliojärvi handles his style with vigour at best, like on older Amoral albums, and at times he sounds like Amorphis's Tomi Joutsen. He's not very volatile, though. Clean vocals by guitarist Tuomas Yli-Jaskari are a bit like Trivium's Matt Heafy's, but more pop than metal. Clean vocals on 'Nothing and Nowhere' are handled by guesting Juha Pälve, and are far superior to the band's own clean ones. Growl accompanying melodic non-metal style vocals have become a trend. The lyrics are about life, and not unlike Soilwork's.

The synthesizer is an element bringing in the melodiousness. Sweeps, mat-sounds, tinkling and other electronic sounds are all expected, and there is nothing really unique incorporated. 'The Crawl's melancholic synth line actually turns annoying with lots of repeating. 'You're Fired!' includes epic, if dated, symphonic keyboard work. 'Nothing and Nowhere' includes lounge jazz stylings on its verses; not a new trick, either.

While sounding "now" here, the band actually sound like they dropped out their deeper thinking and were running on their lizard brains. It's partly too candy-coated for my liking, but much worse pop-sweetened things have been heard in metal music. However, this contains rather good songs, too, and will stay in my record collection. Hey, some innocent fun for TOC fans for sure!

Rating: 6 (out of 10) ratings explained

Reviewed by Lane
12/12/2017 20:01