FARSEER – Fall before the Dawn Review

FARSEER – Fall before the Dawn

Killer Metal Records

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The name of the band made me think they are fans of the fantasy literature since we meet the word “Farseer” either in the Warhammer 40,000 universe or in “The Farseer Trilogy” which is a series of novels written by fantasy author Robin Hobb. This is a good question for an interview for the band to tell me how they inspired their band name. Their name and of course the cover of their debut album makes you think that FARSEER are inspired by fantasy topics, but their lyrics have to do more with the real world of how it is and how we can survive it and forge our own path and live our life in our own way. Yep, cool lyrics and into the heavy metal philosophy I think.

“Fall before the Dawn” is the debut album of this Scottish band and it was first released in 2016 as an independent release and after the impact it had to the press and fans, Killer Metal Records decided to release it again in order to spread it to more metalheads around the world.

FARSEER in their debut album first of all make you feel that you deal with musicians that are well experienced and know exactly what they want to achieve with their music. So, the band manages to take its influences and build a distinguishable and personal sound. Of course their influences are obvious, but they are given in their own way and for me this is original enough. The most important thing, though, is the compositions and how much I like them (believe me I don’t care how obvious or not the band’s influences are, if they can deliver some great music). So, the band musically balances between the heavy and power metal sound and in their debut album offer us 12 compositions that range from traditional metal to power/speed metal compositions and mid tempo with epic touch tracks. Actually the most epic song which is a mid – tempo too is the song entitled “Blindeye” and I think that the band has to write more songs in the way of this track, not that the other songs are less good.

In some reviews that I’ve  read, I saw the description of the band’s sound as a European power metal similar to groups like HAMMERFALL, GAMMA RAY or even NOCTURNAL RITES. They might be a few references to the above mentioned bands but personally speaking or more accurately writing I think that FARSEER are mainly inspired by bands like IRON MAIDEN, BRUCE DICKINSON (personal albums) and the U.S. power metal sound and especially from ICED EARTH and even MANOWAR. But this is not enough, since FARSEER throw some folk metal melodies too in some of their songs (“Blindeye” and “Cthonic Visions”) that reminded me of AMORPHIS.

It is clear that “Fall before the Dawn” is a release that offers a variety of songs to the listener and emotions too. It is really an album that the more times you listen to it the more you will like it and discover things. I think that the band has a bright future ahead if they continue to work as they did with their debut album and of course the muses favors them.

Nick “Verkaim” Parastatidis