Band:	Totem
Album:	Day Before The End
Style:	Death metal, Thrash metal
Release date:	August 25, 2005
A review by:	Jeff

01. Day Before The End
02. The Race (P.O.C.B.F.E.O.O.M.)
03. Merry - Go - Round
04. Taste Of Life
05. Lost Dimension
06. Thrash The South
07. For

Like all the last releases of the Polish label Metal Mind, "Day Before The End" was released in 2005 by the label Empire Records. One more time it's a shame that we didn't have the chance to hear a lot of things about this band but again, Metal Mind re-releases an excellent album entirely made in Poland. Don't miss the first release of Totem if you like technical modern Thrash and melodic Death Metal.

"Day Before The End" is an excellent surprise. The particularity of the band is that they have two singers, a guy, Auman and a girl, Weronika. The alternation between our two vocalists is really interesting because if they both use in general some Death Metal voices, the voice of Auman is a lot more aggressive and loud than the one of Weronika which is a lot more sharpy and disturbing. All the songs of the album are real powerful blasting Thrashy/Death Metal compositions. The riffs are technical and complex but they know how to be effective and the really good point of this album is that, even if some choruses are a bit commercial and sound Metalcore, that we have real technical guitars soli. "Day Before The End" is not an album of classic Thrash Metal, this is modern, really melodic and not so far away of Gothenburg Death Metal but at least that's never easy and we have some real deep compositions on this release. A bit similar to the old Machine Head (not so violent though) with in addition some European influences a la Arch Enemy, "Day Before The End" is a great first album and let's pray to have again something like that when the band will decide to release their new album.

The production of "Day Before The End" is just excellent; I have nothing to say here. Though this album is maybe a bit short and looks a bit more like a big EP than a real first release. Only the song "Taste Of Life" with its really poor clean vocals is a bit deceiving but all in all that's all good! If you like to listen to catchy Powerful modern Thrash you should have a look on this release.

I don't know what the guys of Totem are doing now but this album was released in 2005 and maybe that it could be good to produce a new CD. I hope that they will do it soon because this first album is just excellent and full of good things. If you didn't have the chance to listen to "Day Before The End" be sure to fix this mistake asap, now at least you'll be able to find the album in your record shops, don't miss them!