www.myspace.com/thebitterdawn



Two person black metal band that a buddy and I started in August '07. We don't have much up yet, and we're not done a lot of the writing and recording so what's up is mostly just preview's of song's that are just guitar, bass and drum's with no mixing as of yet.

We don't have a defined style yet, as we are still kind of feeling thing's out but are trying to experiment with some differant element's to give some variety for the moment. Over some time it should get better, and we have some acoustic pieces to record that are actually well done.

good luck, sounds amazing, cant wait to hear more, post back when you have more updates

Thanks very much! This is pretty much just a creative outlet and to support black metal, but if we happen to get a decent demo put together then we'll probably send it into some small label's to see if they are interested.

I am currently re-writing the song Serpent Shores, I just rewrote and recorded the new guitar's and am working on drum's tonight, and may retitle it as "Distant Shores." Hopefully that will be up in a few day's, if not sooner.

sweet, i look forward to it

The drums are waaay to silent!

I've recieved a lot of feedback about the drums being non-existant, and have yet to figure out whats up with that.

We've got a new and more focused direction for the band though. A depressive/symphonic motif is underway and there is only one but new track up on www.myspace.com/thebitterdawn There are plans to do a side project that is more raw and simplistic, so it will kind of be the best of both worlds...not that I'm saying my musical ability is that great.
Ah! As iI've been posting here and there, I got a decent drumkit today so we'll be able to record real drums that should hopefully sound a lot better and bring more life and realism to the music, I'm very excited about this and think it will bring more to our music projects.

- http://bitterdawn.metalhordes.com/
- http://www.myspace.com/thebitterdawn

The first track to be recorded through mic'd amps and a mic'd drum kit, and sometime in the near future I'll get to the vocal part. All guitars, bass and drums were written, recorded and played by me since my bandmate Mikael is rarely over. The drums could have been better but I've only been playing for roughly two months, and they sound a bit compressed after the mixing I did.

Feel free to comment on the track, thanks guys.

You should improve on your drumming, but taking into account that you've only played for two months, this is not bad at all! But right now, they draw too much attention to them, in a bad way (could also be because of your post, that I am focusing more on them)

Otherwise the riffing is quite enjoyable, not unique or anything, but you of course know that already. Keep it up and let me know when you're going to release anything. I'll buy it and if you want, I'll also give it a review here.

PS. Currently listening to Harsh Frost and the vocals are great! The demonic whispers remind me of the Greek scene and also of project of another MS'er, Shores Of Sheol.

I tried to give Shores Of Sheol a listen but I'm just not in the mood for checking out new bands, I've been awake since yesterday and about to take a nap.

But thankyou for taking a listen Nervel and I appreciate your input and perspective. On a scale of 0-100 in how good Bitter Dawn is and my/our capabilities, I'd say we're at 50'ish so I'm always interested in what people have to say because I want to constantly improve and right now this stuff is so-so, not terrible (ha I hope!) but it's nothing unique either. I seriously need to just sit down and practice drumming more, I'd really like to start getting a better grasp on doing smooth double kicks, speed isn't much of a concern right now.
True about the guitar work, it seems to work but isn't overly(sp?) creative, yet I did just want this track to kind of drone on and be more subtle. I was so relieved to get a drum take that didn't sound like total ass that I forgot I wanted to add a slight synth element to this track before I uploaded it, so I may take a stab at that within the week.

Just breaking my response up a bit.

With "Harsh Frost" I did try to do the vocals a bit differantly than I've tried before and I was fairly happy with them, they seemed to be more along the lines of what I wanted in some other preliminary tracks...unlike " In The Black Forest" which is just processed to hell and back.

I'll be more than happy to send you a disc once I get something more solid together, at most I may ask for the cost of shipping charges but that would be it. I'd like to make a cd label and have some inserts for the cd, because I've always felt that album art work gives more feeling to the music and if you wanted to do a review that would be awsome.

We're not really lacking material and in all actuality I think we've got at least six, maybe seven songs that are mostly written, some are really rough preliminaries and others just need to be re-recorded and maybe tweaked a bit. Since I got my Schecter Hellraiser guitar I've been just playing for fun more and came up with some new stuff that I plan to use.

Well I'm rambling a bunch now and am off to sleep. Thanks again to everyone who took a listen.

Updated the myspace page with some visual crap, just a new logo, banner and emblem - nothing special.

Some of you may vaguely recall a track we had up before called "Dismal", well I was getting a bit annoyed with a new track I had been working on and sat down to play the old version of Dismal on my guitar and I ended up just rewriting it.

Once again I think the drums could be more solid, there are a few parts I want to clean up and tighten some of the transitions. Other than that I am fairly content with how things came out, let me know what you guys think and as usual the vocals are in the making.

Thanks everyone.

www.myspace.com/thebitterdawn

track: Dismal (demo preview)

Damn dude, I actually liked the edited 'Dismal' track, it has a lot of energy, and I can't wait to see some vocals over that!

Yeah, good stuff.

Thanks guys, as always I appreciate you just checking it out. I don't think it will be as hard to get some vocals down for Dismal as with Urn, because Dismal is just kind of straight to the point and angry so the vocals will be similar to Harsh Frost - one I also may rewrite and rerecord.

I've been checking out your stuff every so often, right from when you first put it up, and now I feel the need to comment. I'm gonna be honest and say that I thought it was crap at first, but then again, those were just early demo's (I'm talking about the stuff from months ago). Dismal sounds great now! It's good to see that the songs and sound have improved over time, especially the guitar sound.

I'm not really into Depressive BM, but Urn sounds pretty good... those first riffs feel a bit empty though... it just sounds like it could have something else underneath it to give it a bit more atmosphere. The break is spot on, great stuff, I'm looking forward to hearing some vocals...

Feel free to ignore me of course, it's your music. Keep at it.

Thanks for your honesty Skeggjadr.

The stuff that began in June/July '07 was the first music I've ever written and was recorded via a tone port directly onto the computer, and programed drums. The track Poignant Reverence was done that way, and honestly I'm not entirely sure why I haven't taken it down yet.

I definitely know my stuff could be better, it's all so-so, nothing special. I think it helps that I am finally recording things properly through a mic'ed amp and a mic'ed drumkit, and I finally have decent equipment.

Urn is lacking a bit, the riffs are so simple and I used a tom & a condensor mic when I should have just used the snare mic, and I also will start using the bass drum mic to record bass guitar now that I know it's the mics other function.

I got a new snare and crash cymbal so I re-did the drums a bit ago today and did some mixing, and the new version of Dismal was just put up a few moments ago. Again, it's not how I want it to be but hopefully it's an improvement. I'm not the biggest depressive bm fan either, that just kind of became the idea of what we'd try to do, as I am more into Gorgoroth, Mayhem, Darkthrone and a really big fan of Carpathian Forest.

Put up a new track today that was loosely based off the old track "Harsh Frost", thus the name "Once Of Frost". Not a very good track name I admit, but then again nor was "Harsh Frost"! It's a short track running at 2:43, and it does have vocals however they suck, and you can't hear them half of the time.

I do have one more new track but the bass is pretty shitty, so I probably won't be putting that up quite yet.

One last thing up for the night, it's a reapproach to an acoustic track called "Winter's Cellar". There's some info. about it on our blog at the myspace page.

Removed Winter's Cellar and put up a new track called "Kvltskald". The new one feels like it's lacking something, the last few seconds of the drums were suppose to be cut out and I'm starting to think alot of my tracks sound the same....

Kvltskald got the boot, it wasn't that great. My bandmate/college finally made it over for a session last night and showed me something new he was working on, so we immediately recorded it with his new Jackson and then I got him to put the bass down - I was surprised at how quickly things got done.
I didn't have much luck laying out a drum track for the song he wrote that night, but with some persistance I got something down tonight and even put down some very sub-par vocals.

New track is called "Lethargy In Red" and is currently being processed on the myspace page for upload, so it'll be up for a listen in a little bit. The track is quite a bit differant than our other stuff, mostly because Mikael is alot better of an guitarist than myself.

Put up two new tracks on the MH page, "Toiling Through" and "Terror-Recumbent".

Toiling Through vocals are incomplete, and Terror still needs vocals.

http://bitterdawn.metalhordes.com/

New track up on our myspace page, I took down "Once Of Frost" and replaced it with the new track "Never End The Night" which is a track that actually has proper lyrics and complete vocal work, the song is not bad.

I really like it, Toiling through and Terror Recumbant are pretty impressive.

Thanks a bunch again man, my college will be very pleased with what you said. He wrote and recorded guitars & bass for both of those tracks, and since the guitar was so differant than my own it gave me a good challenge to write/record drums to.

I think it was Terror-Recumbent we were recording, the time was like 12:30am and I had just finished a drum take when the cops came knocking at my door. I'm still not 100% happy with the drums, but it took many retakes and at least three or so hours to get it the way it is now.

Bitter Dawn is currently an inactive project, although I'm still creating music and have started to build a new studio. I finally decided to make our album "Winterthorns" available for free download.

Official page

Or, if you want to skip the b.s., and are interested in the download. Bitter Dawn - Winterthorns (2008)