Band: Black Sun Aeon
Title: Darkness Walks Beside Me
Label: Cyclone Empire
Distribution: Sure Shot Worx
Release date: 27/03/2009
Review: CD

Tuomas Saukkonen is a very busy guy. Not only he’s known for the famous Finish melodic Death Metal band Before The Dawn (which did recently release their best album to date, by the way, also through Cyclone Empire), but he is / was also involved with bands as, for example, Teargod, Dawn Of Solace and Bonegrinder. His newest project is called Black Sun Aeon and this one stands for a melodic and melancholic form of Doom-Death-oriented Metal. Tuomas did take care of almost everything (including production), but he worked with some guest musicians, among whom Mynni Luukkinen (Unveiled, Obscurant, Sotajumala, ex-Alghazanth, etc), Mikko Heikkilä (Sinamore), Ville Sorvali (of Moonsorrow / Ahti / Lakupaavi / Amoral / ...-fame), and Tomi Koivusaari (Ajattara, Amorphis, Verenpisara, Abhorrence etc), while Juho Räihä, also in Before The Dawn (as well as the young yet promising project Gloria Morti) did take care of the mix (the mastering, by the way, was done by the Finnish mastering-master Mika Jussila at his Finnvox Studio, of course).
Black Sun Aeon indeed contains certain elements that are to consider, more or less, within the same regions as several other Saukkonen-bands, but the basics are different. Black Sun Aeon brings melodic yet pretty obscure Doom-Death Metal with that subtle touch of darkness that also characterizes (read: characterized) projects as early Katatonia. The atmosphere is comparable to Tuomas’s main band, Before The Dawn, yet again, this projects isn’t just an easy successor of BTD, on the contrary. Also old Paradise Lost, On Thorns I Lay, Daylight Dies, Swallow The Sun and The Old Dead Tree may have been of non-ignorable influence. There’s enough variation, there is not a complete copycat-mentality, the sound is correct (not too clean, yet certainly not inferior), the compositions are pretty exiting, and the whole seems to fit in one way or another. It sickens me, because principally I am ‘against that Suomi-oriented would-be melancholic atmospheres, yet like in the case of the last Before The Dawn-album, I just need to express my appreciation for this strong recording. Damn, Finnish melodic melancholy mostly stands for ridiculous nonsense, but from time to time even I can be enthusiastic! Not in an exaggerated way, yet silently, modestly… Total running time: forty four minutes.

81/100

Ivan Tibos.