Troglodyte Dawn is the one-man project of Randy Michaud. On this disc, Randy plays a 70's influenced, dirty metal/hard rock style that has grown on me a bit over time, but really doesn't connect in a way that's gonna keep me coming back very often. The band plays a mixture of slow, doomy and mid-tempo material.
After the opening intro, the band goes into the song "Fallen World". The first part of this song almost bores me to tears. Thankfully the song picks up the pace near the end and even supplies us with a nice guitar solo. The next song "Redeemed" is somewhat of a praise song mixed with heavy music. The thing that bugs me about this song is the fake crowd noise in the background. This is something that has been overdone by way too many bands and just detracts from the song in my opinion.
After an instrumental, the band does a cover of Black Sabbath's "After Forever". However, Troglodyte Dawn changes the lyrics to create a parody and even changes the title of the song to "Forever After". Not a bad effort, but I've never really been a fan of parodies, so no big points in my book for this song.
If there is one song on this disc that somewhat grabs my attention, it's the marathon song, "Lust", which clocks in at 10 minutes and 34 seconds. The song starts off with some very brutal guitars before going into a calmer, bluesy hard rock feel. Then it rips into an almost punk-like pace with some groove while Randy goes into a vocal styling very similar to the guy from the old Tooth and Nail band Crux. The song continues to shift styles throughout the song, but never really sounds bad doing this. Not a blockbuster song, but at least a better effort than the rest of the disc. More in this vein would give me more hope for this band.
Randy is not a horrible vocalist, but I just can't really get into his style on most songs. He reminds me somewhat of a cross between the vocalist from the old Tooth and Nail band Crux, Adam Again vocalist, Gene Eugene, and the dude from Babylon Mystery Orchestra. I actually love Gene Eugene's vocals, but I still find it hard to get into the vocals here. Lyrically, Troglodyte Dawn has very Christ-centered lyrics that are very uplifting and often emotional. Unfortunately, the production suffers somewhat detracting from the overall sound.
This is not a band devoid of talent, but there is many areas that need some drastic improvement. The vocals need to be stronger and more consistent. The production needs a facelift. And the music could use some more aggression...just to name a few things. (Review by Matt)
