SUMMONING — Old Mornings Dawn (review)

SUMMONING — Old Mornings Dawn album cover

Album · 2013 · Atmospheric Black Metal

2.5/5 · 2013-07-31
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Old Mornings Dawn (2013) is the seventh full-length studio album by Austrian black metal act Summoning. This one can be considered quite the long awaited release since it's been a whopping seven years since the release of Oath Bound (2006), although from a personal perspective this is my first encounter with the band. Pretty odd that really given that Summoning in my experience are one of black metal's most talked about acts and I listen to Protector's non-metal side project Die Verbannten Kinder Evas, but somehow I never got around to giving Summoning a go until the promo pack for Old Mornings Dawn arrived. Despite my unintentional reluctance to listen to them before I was expecting good things from Old Mornings Dawn.

And it does deliver good things, but I have to say not in the way I expected or really in a quantity that I really like to hear in an album. The brand of black metal on Old Mornings Dawn is one of the most atmospheric takes on the genre I've ever heard. There's some instances of cross over into symphonic black metal's territory but for the most part Summoning don't vary what they do an awful lot here. What they are doing is more unique within the atmospheric black metal genre than any other artist I've listened to but when we're dealing with generally long (7+ minutes, introductory instrumental aside) tracks and an over hour long running time after my initial interest has been piqued the album does seem to drag.

It's not that what Summoning has done on Old Mornings Dawn is bad, I can quite imagine that if this is the sort of sound you dig then it'd be quite the easy album to get immersed in, but for the rest of us there's something distinctly lacking here - song identity, especially when considering the more traditional black metal elements found here (meaning, in simpler terms, what the guitars are doing). I have genuine difficultly telling these tracks apart. Evernight, which is that intro I mentioned, aside on account of it isn't actually metal, everything seems done by the book. Their own book certainly which for me gives them a few brownie points put when the music is presented in such a quantity as on Old Mornings Dawn by the time a couple of tracks are down unfortunately the album shows itself as one of those that fails to hold my attention.

Even Evernight, really, is done by that same book. It's basically what the rest of the album would sound like it you stripped away the black metal elements. I'm drawing attention to this because through the whole thing is feels like the black metal is playing second fiddle to the atmospheric stuff, for which I've seen the term 'fantasy music' used to describe. Not a term I've come across before to be honest but all things considered I'd say the boot fits, although 'medieval music' is the term I'd personally use. It's not the dark and evil sort of sound in other words that early black metal stood for, although it can have a melancholic effect at times. But at others it's something which sounds surprisingly cheery. I'm all for doing things different to what genre originators intended but all the same in this case I can't shake the thought that if I want to listen to happy metal, I have plenty of European style power metal bands to choose from.

As far as Old Mornings Dawn is concerned because of its nature it's hard to single out of best track to recommend, so I guess I'll say Flammifer, which is the first proper song on the album and so is the one that keeps my attention the most, or perhaps the title track which directly follows. Maybe If I'd listened to other songs individually I'd have ultimately chosen another, but Old Mornings Dawn didn't leave a strong enough impression on me to give it that sort of time. The melodies themselves are usually brilliant and the best aspect as the album as a whole, but at the end of the day I've got to review this as a metal release and despite what it has going for it, Old Mornings Dawn has been found wanting. An above average tier rating seems fair in this case.

64/100

(Originally written for Heavy Metal Haven: http://metaltube.freeforums.org/summoning-old-mornings-dawn-t3061.html)