Review: Armored Dawn “Barbarians In Black”

Brazil band Armored Dawn formed in 2011 and for the seven years already shared scene with Sabaton, Fates Warning, Symphony X and in 2016 released a debut album ‘Power Of A Warrior’. Two years later the time has come for the second LP ‘Barbarians In Black’ with which the band expects to conquer the public abroad their homeland Brazil.

However, do not be deceived by an album’s name, greatly done cover by João Duarte or the band’s brutal and charismatic outfit (this have been done perfectly, I need to say). All of  this relates to Power Metal and even more so Viking Metal like Arnold Schwarzenegger in his furry pants from “Conan The Barbarian” to the real Barbarians. And it’s because all the ten songs from an album are predictable and highly trivial.

It would seem that the band has really good rhythm section: drummer Rodrigo Oliveira plays great – double pedal and energetic delivery can be heard in every song; bassist Fernando Giovannetti also plays quite good. Guitarists  Timo Kaarkoski and Tiago de Moura deliver powerful and sometimes interesting riffs and solos. Keyboardist Rafael Agostino creates an atmosphere almost in every song. There are some questions for the vocalist Eduardo Parras, because his voice is frankly weak for the genre, and in the most of the songs he rather leads the narrative but not sings. On the contrary there are no complaints to the sound: mixing and mastering were made by Seeb Levermann, who worked with Orded Ogan and Rhapsody Of Fire.

But why the hell there is only one Power Metal song with such musicians – “Chance To Live Again” and the others are kind of attempts to portray some epic (“Beware Of The Dragons” and “Men Of Odin”), almost Post Grunge a-la Three Days Grace (“Eyes Behind The Crow”) or some major Bon Jovi like melodies, played a little more “metal”? Well, the most striking example of what I’m talking about is the song “Unbreakable”: keyboards intro that goes to a guitar one and simple pattern on which some impressive but also simple receptions hang. But the problem of poppy patterns and predictability still remained and sticks out from under guitars and percussion like a big breasts from under armor brassiere in pseudo historical “B” category action movies.

Again, this album would be great if not its tragic triviality and poppy melodies. If we take guitar effects from Slayer – it will stay Slayer. If we’ll make the same with Megadeth, we will hear some jazzy notes. But acoustic Armored Dawn is not Rihanna, but quite Dido  or what is it now. And  maybe there is nothing bad with this at all but the contents do not match the wrapper. Although there is a chance that it’ll be fixed in future.

‘Barbarians In Black‘ will be released on February, 23 via AFM Records.