The four marauders in Wayward Dawn from Skanderborg, Denmark, may not be grizzled veterans (in fact, their ages range from 19 to 21), but you’d never guess that from listening to their music. The brand of death metal they’ve embraced is ferociously powerful, demonically sinister, furiously enraged, and delivered with explosive energy. And they’ve already demonstrated precocious song-writing talent, injecting their slaughtering assaults with booming grooves and the kind of riffs that get stuck in a listener’s head.
Wayward Dawn made their mark last year with their debut album, Soil Organic Matter, and participated in a four-way split this past spring (Carriers of the Disease), and now on this lucky Friday the 13th, they’re releasing a new single through Mighty Music named “Prophet“. To commemorate the occasion we’re cooperating with a few other sites to present the debut of the song through a video that captures the band’s live energy.
Drummer Lukas Nysted gets things off to a head-hammering start with a pounding, rumbling drum progression while his bandmates unite in a riff that sounds both anthemic and dismal. From there, the band segue into a savage attack of thundering percussion and vicious, seething tremolo’d riffing, while the vocal duo of guitarist Rasmus Johansen and bassist Kasper Szupienko Petersen expel monstrous roars.
The band return to those morbid opening chords but also bring the groove with bursts of cranium-cracking sledgehammer blows, and launch into even more frenzied combinations of whirring guitar decimation and blasting drum work as Johansen elevates his bestial voice into savage shrieks. Johansen and guitarist Jakob Kristensen run riot through their cruel, maniacal fretwork, but the dynamism of the song persists right up to a final episode of thuggish hammering.
Wayward Dawn‘s debut album was recorded and produced by Jacob Bredahl in Dead Rat Studio and mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege (Obituary, Nails, Full of Hell), and that same duo handled the production and mastering of “Prophet“.
The single features artwork by Simon Gardarsson, and as mentioned, it’s being released by Mighty Music today — in advance of a show tonight at Stengade in Copenhagen, Denmark, when Wayward Dawn will be playing in support of label mates (and NCS favorites) Blood Red Throne, whose new album we’ll also be reviewing today).
BUY:
https://song.link/dk/i/1476271263
FACEBOOK:
https://www.facebook.com/waywarddawn/