Band:	Dawn Of Ashes
Album:	Genocide Chapters
Style:	Melodic black metal
Release date:	September 2010

01. Conjuration Of The Maskim's Black Blood
02. Nyarlathotep's Children Of The Void
03. Seething The Flesh In The River Of Phlegethon
04. Transformation Within Fictional Mutation
05. The Ancient Draining Room
06. Reanimation Of The Dark Ages
07. London's Anthem For The Pleasure Of Mutilation
08. Sacrilegious Reflection
09. God-Like Demon
10. Carnal Consummation In The Empty Space
11. Epilogue - Beginning Of The End

And now for an unwanted second opinion.

Once a cliché spewing industrial metal band (or Aggrotech, if you want to be a genre-dick about it), Dawn Of Ashes has risen, like a griffin, from the ashes of a struggling genre and become a cliché spewing melodic black metal outfit.

Although Dawn Of Ashes is clearly fond of experimentation, it appears that they're incapable of creating anything original. They experiment with sounds and styles that have already been done and done nearly to death. Though that is not enough to make a band bad, mediocrity isn't strong enough a word to describe the expertly-executed boringness of their new, genre-hopping album, Genocide Chapters.

Imagine, if you will, that Dawn Of Ashes is the product of Behemoth, Nine Inch Nails, and Dimmu Borgir at their laziest. Even if you are a fan of all three of those bands, you likely won't enjoy Genocide Chapters. The riffs are neither blunt nor sharp; they're dull, leaving the listener with the sensation of earwax-clogged ears. The melodies are tedious, the synth work is contrived, and the drumming is lackluster. The only truly passable aspect of the Genocide Chapters sound is the decent vocal performance of Kristof Bathory.

Dawn Of Ashes is to metal what Hollywood Rom-Coms are to the film industry: their music is of the banal cookie-cutter variety, doomed to be forgotten quickly. The insipidity of Genocide Chapters will rightly be recognized as disagreeable by those with sound critical faculties. On paper, they look like the average melodic black metal band. They have a penchant for theatricality and costume, for Satanism, and for cranked synthesizers. Dawn Of Ashes is to metal what Sarah Palin is to the struggle of the Iraqi Kurds for autonomy: totally irrelevant. Once again, however, this lack of uniqueness is not what makes them a bad band. The fact that they put their hackneyed image over their hackneyed sound is. Indeed, one might understandably argue that Dawn Of Ashes is an image. They are neither a band to be taken seriously nor a band with a clear sense of humor. Genocide Chapters is testament to this, and should be avoided (or, should I say "continue to be avoided"?).