Debut album of a Spanish band formed in 2006, "The Old Prophecy of Winterland" is composed of 11 tracks lasting for almost 50 minutes. Frozen Dawn presents us a guitar leads based Black Metal mid-tempo played with some good old-school flavour at times and with an overall melodic atmosphere given by the same guitar leads, without keys or any other extra instruments to fill in and give the melody to the whole. And that's the key point of Frozen Dawn, meaning the guitar work, the most important element in their music. The bass lines are ok, but a bit hidden behind the other instruments, the drums are flowing Swiss-clock-like making me think of drum-programs, but even if they are, their sound is not disturbing at all, it's pretty good actually. Grinder, the vocalist, has a good, hoarse vocal timbre and he seems to put a lot of effort into what he does giving their music a bit of feeling because the rest sounds a bit too calculated, too mathematical and perfect, and the choirs used here and there, plus the addition of the raw female vocals of bassist Davinia are more than welcome. Not a groundbreaking release, but a decent, entertaining one that won't disappoint Melodic Black Metal followers, especially live I guess.
Reviewed by Adrian
Rating: 8/10
