Band:	Before The Rain
Album:	...One Day Less
Style:	Death doom metal
Release date:	July 30, 2007
Guest review by:	Njord

01. Wounds Of Rejection
02. You... My Ruin
03. Paragraph
04. Framless
05. Be Mine
06. One Day Less

...One Day Less is the first full-length album of this Portuguese band from Setúbal. This suburban territory of the the capital Lisbon provides favorable landscape for the band's message which talks to us about pain, rejection, loneliness and other personal dramas, recurrent in the music made in the suburban spaces.

In ...One Day Less, some clear traces of Swedish death metal legacy first come to attention, mainly in the guitars. They shine with a healthy competition between them, aiming all the time for the conjugation of melody with structure, always avoiding falling into dependency or exaggeration. They achieve this task without big problems with some good imagination like clean vocals ("One Day less") or acoustic atmosphere ("You My Ruin"). In these aspects there is a clear hand of Hugo Santos in the guitar work, so there's no surprise why Process Of Guilt (his main project) hs so much in common with Before The Rain.

Despite the initial traces of death metal, Before The Rain is, on the contrary, much more connected to the doom scene at it's down-tempo best, with an obvious influence being Anathema's constant melancholy of the melody, unmistakable drums and the voice possessed by the pain ("Be Mine" is the best example of that). Of course there are no bands with exactly the same sound and this Portuguese doom band, despite all the affinity with the English doom gods, bring us a proposal of down-tempo doom with dramatic atmosphere, along with slow and heavy guitars. It's definitely a good choice for those searching for Anathema's heritage but is also a good find for fans of My Dying Bride and Paradise Lost.