Before the Dawn is a Finnish melodic death metal/gothic metal band formed in 1999 by Tuomas Saukkonen.
The band was founded in 1999 by Tuomas Saukkonen as his solo project: “I played and recorded all instruments in the first demo To Desire Part 1 by on my own then for the second demo I had a friend of mine on the drums. The first line-up was gathered so that BTD could perform live. With many changes in the line up BTD entered the studio to record the MCD called Gehenna. I received couple of deal offers but nothing serious enough. BTD continued playing gigs and I kept on writing lots of new material, and the next MCD called My Darkness got very good feedback and a serious enough record deal was offered by Locomotive Music.”
Joined by Panu Willman, Mike Ojala, and Kimmo Nurmi, the newly formed lineup released their first full-length album, My Darkness, in 2003. It was followed up by a second album in 2004, 4:17 am. The band supported Katatonia on a Scandinavian and European tour in 2003.
In 2005, Saukkonen announced a new lineup for the band, removing all the members currently in and replacing them with his so-called “Live Assault Team”: Norwegian Lars Eikind (Winds, Age of Silence, Khold) on clean vocals and bass, Gloria Morti guitarist Juho Räihä, keyboarder Joel Mäkinen and drummer Aatu Mukka. The reason was that Saukkonen felt that the previous band members were badly motivated and not professional enough.
The Ghost CD released in 2006, however, rather turned out to be another solo project for Tuomas. Because of the huge amount of song material written for that album, Saukkonen created another album, The Darkness, for a side-project, Dawn of Solace…
In 2021, the band was reformed. On 30 April, the band released the single “The Final Storm”. The single was made for the Deadlight reissue which was released in 9 July 2021. On 7 September 2022 BTD announced that a new member Paavo Laapotti joins the band as a vocalist, while Tuomas takes up live drumming. A new album titled Stormbringers will be released on 30 June 2023.
Members
Tuomas Saukkonen – drums, studio guitars and keyboards (1999–2013, 2021-present), harsh vocals and rhythm guitar (1999–2013, 2021-2022)
Paavo Laapotti – vocals
Juho Räihä – lead guitar
Pyry Hanski – bass guitar
Πηγή: https://en.wikipedia.org/
