I have a lot to talk about here, after the phenomenal set of demos and the first full length, Sweden’s AFFLICTED have had a change of heart and a change in line-up. “Dawn Of Glory” is a traditional Heavy Metal album. I’m going to moan about the movement from the excellent progressive / technical Death Metal sound to this cheeky, bare bones sound that I was pretty upset about initially. After I expressed my frustration in many tonal modulations, I thought to myself, how bad can this album be? Well, the answer to that is two fold. Firstly, no this isn’t a bad album, in fact this is a decent Heavy Metal album. The vocalist, the one line-up change, can get annoying from time to time, but the guitarwork is brilliant. The solos, especially on the title track ‘Dawn Of Glory’, are absolutely amazing. This is a surprisingly well written album. I mean, once you move past your initial disappointment of the genre switch, which almost felt like a stab to the heart. But that’s alright. Moving on to track # 3, ‘The Oracle’, again it follows the same format, standard opening but bloody brilliant guitar work! The bass particularly shines on this song, which is a welcome change. I’ve got to hand it to the instrument players from AFFLICTED, the genre switch did not change their enthusiasm at all. “Dawn Of Glory” on the whole has well written songs, the album is well produced and this reissue by Century Media is pretty sweet in itself. I don’t necessarily agree with the vocals here and how they’re so high in the mix, could’ve easily been a notch or two down, the musicians have all done a brilliant job. I don’t want to say I like this, but I’ll summarize this write-up with yes, this is not bad, but it truly shines in places, and where it shines it’s really bright. These moments are sprinkled all over the record to keep your interest and boy, they manage to do just that! Oh and that METALLICA cover is pretty sweet! For more information, please visit www.facebook.com/centurymedia