...DAWN

...Dawn is a demo cassette tape release from Swedish experimental/ progressive Death metal act Pan.Thy.Monium. Pan.Thy.Monium is another one of prolific Swedish metal/prog rock musician and producer Dan Swanö´s many projects. His main band in 1990 was Death metal act Edge of Sanity but he also found time for Pan.Thy.Monium. In fact 1990 was a particularly busy year for Dan Swanö as he released three demos with Edge of Sanity ( Kur-Nu-Gi-A, The Dead and The Immortal Rehearsals. Edge of Sanity´s debut demo called Euthanasia was released in 1989) as well as ...Dawn by Pan.Thy.Monium. While Edge of Sanity was a pretty straight forward Swedish death metal band in those days Pan.Thy.Monium had a more experimental approach, something that Edge of Sanity would also develop in time.

...Dawn consists of four songs in sinister and dark death metal style. As on the debut album from Pan.Thy.Monium called Dawn of Dreams (1992) all musicians are working under pseudonyms and Dan Swanö calls himself Day Disyraah. Dan plays bass and keyboards on the demo and if you know his later work with bands like Edge of Sanity, Nightingale and his solo album Moontower (1998) his style is easily recognisable. The motifs he plays on ...Dawn is just a bit darker and weirder than his usual keyboard style. Aag aka Tom Nouga (Lead guitars, organ, barytone saxophone) has not entered the band yet and his contributions which helped to make the debut album such a great experience are missed even though the music is still interesting and experimental. The vocals are really deep and brutal. Very powerful IMO.

The musicianship is good but it is obvious that ...Dawn is a demo and you should not expect vacuum tight musicianship.

The production is raw and rather primitive. You can easily make out everything that´s happening though and as far as early nineties extreme metal demo productions go this one is one of the best I´ve heard.

...Dawn has been a pleasant surprise for me. When I saw that the demo was released in 1990 I didn´t expect much from the sound quality, the musicianship or the compositions but ...Dawn proved me wrong. If you like any other of Dan Swanö´s extreme metal releases you should most definitely seek this one out as well. A bit more brutal and primitive than most of his output but very enjoyable anyway. 3 stars is well deserved. I even considered a 4 star rating for a while but that´s what I gave Dawn of Dreams and that album is superiour to ...Dawn so a 3 star rating will do.