On July 30th internationally, W.T.C.Productions is proud to present True Black Dawn‘s highly anticipated third album, Of Thick-circling Shadows.
True Black Dawn are a cult band above all “cult” bands. Come the Colorless Dawn, that record marked the second (or even third) era of the band. See, back in 1992 when they first formed, True Black Dawn were simply “Black Dawn” years before a no-name American band threatened legal action. A handful of demos were released that decade before their classic debut album, Blood for Satan, arrived in 2001. A tense hiatus followed before a very strange three-way split Enochian Crescent and O came at the end of 2005, signaling a shift – or fucking with their audience, or the underground, or whoever – from the filthy & furious Finnish black metal of their preceding work to something almost industrialized and inhuman, wild and boundless and unorthodox no matter how you qualify it. Thus, when Come the Colorless Dawn surprisingly arrived, heralding the band’s official return after a couple teasing festival performances, True Black Dawn had largely drawn those two (challenging) poles together – and started on a new path equally powerful and poignant.
And so it goes with Of Thick-circling Shadows, an extrapolation / intensification of all that came before but with yet another subtle-yet-significant sonic shift: majestic, mesmerizing melody of a most purple-blue hue. It’s not disingenuous to suggest that True Black Dawn here are drawing together that elusive balance (or at least juxtaposition) of the “classic” and the “modern,” given the cold-metal contours they continue to icily erect which particularly imparts the latter. But that balance / juxtaposition isn’t solely relegated to ’90s melodicism / industrialized textures; across a bulk of Of Thick-circling Shadows, the intensity is pushed well into the blastbeaten red – truly, founding vocalist Wrath sounds like he’s being torn apart – while the subtlest dusting of synths tastefully heightens / deranges the vortextural violence circling that spidery, spiraling melodicism. Thus does the title make sense, at least within the album’s sonic aesthetics, while the psychedelically smeared artwork (courtesy of Jukka Siikala and Babalon Graphics) provides ample visual cues for what the listener is getting into when he enters these Thick-circling Shadows.
All this grimy grandeur is given palpitating, Technicolor clarity courtesy of Tore Stjerna’s mastering, making the streamlined orthodoxy of Come the Colorless Dawn both a conclusion to that era of the band and a springboard into a new one. Have True Black Dawn, some 30-plus years after their formation, delivered their masterwork with Of Thick-circling Shadows? Only time will tell…but the present is as dark and daunting as the album’s namesake.
In the meantime, hear the brand-new video “Algol” here:
Aforementioned cover artwork and tracklisting are as follows:
Tracklisting for True Black Dawn’s Of Thick-circling Shadows
1. Algol
2. The Depths of the Looking Glass
3. Night and Names
4. The Wind from the Red Cloud
5. Fish, Sin and Soma
6. Body-without-Soul
7. Worlds in the Mirror
8. Palace of Ash
9. Volaverunt
10. The End of Our Age
MORE INFO:
www.facebook.com/trueblackdawn
www.facebook.com/W.T.C.Productions