The whole Entombed/Entombed A.D. fracture is an enormous mess; L-G Petrov, the sandpaper-lunged frontman for both outfits, was being more time managerial than evasive when he recently explained, “It’ll take half an hour to tell this story,” before getting shit-hammered on whiskey and having the recanting of legal struggles with former friends and bandmates drop on his priority list.
But death metal soldiers on and Dead Dawn demonstrates that the A.D. version has traversed the hired-guns-grasping-at-straws feel of debut/10th album, Back To The Front. The classic Entombed sound is so ingrained in the fabric of extreme music that Dead Dawn may be a Sisyphean battle against preconceptions and old-school worship, but there are a good number of bouncy, upbeat tracks set to serve as healthy 2016 setlist additions – full-throttle, rollicking opener Midas In Reverse and the anthemic grooving crush of Total Death, in particular, as well as loads of interesting and excellent guitar solos. On the opposite end, there more missteps than you’d expect from a collection of veterans, and they usually involve the spacious production quality detracting from mid-paced crawlers and soundtrack-y ballad Hubris Fall. So yeah, death’n’roll is still what they do best, suffixed acronyms or not.
