Finland’s Before the Dawn Take a Lickin’ and Keep on Kickin’ Ass

On 'Deathstar Rising,' Before the Dawn continue to mesh melodic death metal with the type of doom and gloom that can only be born of frostbitten Finnish winters. Over the past decade, the band has endured more revolving door membership issues than most of its peers, but for vocalist-guitarist-songwriter Tuomas Saukkonen, it's all blackened water under the dilapidated bridge that's about to collapse.

"Before the Dawn were born in the dark year of 1999, and since the origin year has the Number of the Beast in it in upside-down form, the birth of the band was as true evil as it can be," Saukkonen recently told Noisecreep. "Due to this God-forsaken fact, there has been significant amount of bad karma during the past years, including bad deals, 17 ex-members, f---ed-up tours. Rough times had left a certain mark on the music, and BTD have never been much like summer music. Also, the past failures have brought pretty solid aggression to the live performance. Darkness has brought us a long way, so let's hope that the light in the end of the tunnel comes from a train!"

According to Saukkonen, the metal scene in Finland can be summed up both mathematically and superlatively. "There's less population than in Moscow -- 10 million in Moscow, 5 million in [all of] Finland -- but Finland more great bands than [all of] Europe, in my opinion," he said. "[There is] also very active metal scene, and a lot of cool stuff [is] coming up from the underground all the time."

For 'Deathstar Rising,' Saukkonen feels the band has kept the creative process moving forward. "During the years, BTD have developed a kind of a trademark sound," he said. "I do not hear that, but I get that a lot from fans and reporters, so I guess there is some sort of BTD sound on each album. With each album, I aim to create something new instead of just repeating an old formula. That would be easy, but not very rewarding."

Saukkonen admitted that he has a "bad habit" of being very impulsive in the studio. His of-the-moment approach resulted in the song 'Wreith,' track 10 on 'Deathstar Rising.' The tune was 90 percent improvised in the studio. "On the last drum recording day, I got an idea of a song and I really wanted to record that song to the album," Saukkonen recalled. "I played a quick drum demo for our drummer so that he could do the final drum track right away, and I wrote half of the riffs while he was recording the drums. The whole outro part of the song was built later when the track list was decided, but everything else besides the last riff was just an idea that became an actual song on the album in less than an hour in the studio."

Saukkonen, who has four bands, works as a session musician, and runs his own studio, still sees music as a "hobby" rather than work. The rocker has also been working as a gardener for 13 years. "I really like to work outside and being connected to the nature," he revealed. "It's not the most 'metal job.'" Hey, even metalheads need some non-metal interests.