Rob Darken is back with a new Graveland album, and as usual it’s very good. Darken seems to be quite comfortable with the direction his project has taken, because it’s no different from last year’s The Fire of Awakening; the only difference perhaps is that this one feels a little bit more fast, but more of the same really.

Dawn of Iron Blades is a solid Epic Black Metal release in the vein of Bathory, with mid-paced, solid riffing and some incredible keyboards; in fact Graveland is probably one of the bands with the coolest keyboards, just listen to the keyboards at the beginning of To the North of Rubicon, or the ones found in Crown Heroic in my Departure, and you’ll see what I mean; they have a very powerfull epic sound and feeling that I simply love; I guess that’s why Darken has always been hailed as a great implementer of them.

The rhythm is steadily marked by the drums (drum machine) which have a very solid, war like feeling; my only complaint is the abuse of the cymbals that can get a bit annoying after a while. Darken’s voice is grim and rough, although I feel it’s slowly starting to wear off; also the war shrieks found on earlier albums are once again present in this album.

The production in this album is quite nice making the album easy to enjoy; it is clear and everything is perfectly balanced, although it still manages to keep a bit of a raw sound maintaining it far from being overproduced, thing that I like in this kind of music.

Although I really prefer Graveland’s older stuff, like the amazing Thousand Swords, I still enjoy the direction Darken’s music has taken; let’s only hope it evolves more in the feature; since 2002 Darken has released an album each year; so maybe if he took a bit more time in between albums he could evolve more in his music; but anyway, don’t listen to my whining that much because all in all, this is a very good release; fans of Graveland’s recent work will love this one, as well as the people that enjoyed Bathory’s epic era.

Rob Darken still stands tall; let us hope that he continues to do so by releasing great albums like this one.

Important Note: Neither does Daniel nor the Metal Reviews site, approve, condone, or agree with any of the ideologies promoted and supported by Graveland or any Nationalist Socialist Black Metal band; even though the intention of this review is to portray the musical quality of the album, it is the duty of Metal Reviews to explicitly express it's firm stance againts any form of discrimination, specially one as stupid as racism.

In Metal We Trust!!!