Album Review: Dawn of Solace - Affliction Vortex
Reviewed by Richard Oliver
I, like many others, was absolutely thrilled when Dawn Of Solace returned in 2019 after legal issues meant the band was put to rest in 2013. Formed by Finnish master of gloom Tuomas Saukkonen (of Wolfheart & Before The Dawn), Dawn Of Solace was an even doomier and gloomier project with the band’s debut album “The Darkness” being an absolutely glorious piece of melodic death doom metal. Teaming up with vocalist Mikko Heikkilä (of Kaunis Kuolematon) upon the resurrection of the band, Dawn Of Solace have taken a more gothic doom metal direction on albums “Waves” and “Flames Of Perdition” and that continues with the fourth album “Affliction Vortex”.
One thing that is clearly evident on “Affliction Vortex” is the increased usage of harsh vocals which haven’t had this much prominence in the band’s sound since the debut album. The harsh vocals come from both Tuomas and Mikko but with Mikko handling all the clean vocals whilst Tuomas handles the majority of the instrumentation (guitars, bass and drums) whilst keyboards are performed by Saku Moilanen (of Red Moon Architect).
The increased use of harsh vocals means the album has a darker and angrier tone to it as well as the mournful melancholy that is a key component of the Dawn Of Solace sound such as on the excellent ‘Fortress’ whilst ‘Rival’ sticks entirely to clean vocals and focuses far more on the sadness and melancholy. There is a Finnish melodeath sound prevalent on the gorgeous ‘Invitation’ whilst ‘Perennial’ has a far more dark, sinister and evil tone to it. The album finishes with a punishing piece of gothic doom metal in the form of ‘Mother Earth’ which is a suitably bleak conclusion to the album.
After the relatively safe sounding “Flames Of Perdition” album, “Affliction Vortex” sees Dawn Of Solace extend their wings slightly with a more diverse sounding album. The songs shift in style and sound whilst maintaining the melancholic gloom that Finnish bands seem to do better than anyone else. The songs themselves are all very succinct with no padding or excessiveness simply doing the job of delivering gloom and melancholy. “Affliction Vortex” is a great album mixing together doom metal, gothic metal and melodic death metal in wonderful style. If bands such as Insomnium, Swallow The Sun and Hanging Garden float your boat then this comes highly recommended.
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