BEFORE THE DAWN saw the light of day in 1999 and were created as the solo-project of Tuomas Saukkonen. After creating the first demo all alone and the second one only with the help of a friend on drums, he gathered a first full line-up to also be able to play live.
After many line-up-changes BTD entered a studio to record the first mini-CD called “Gehenna”. It received good reactions and a couple of deal offers but nothing serious enough. BTD continued playing gigs and after the second MCD “My Darkness” the band received got very good feedback and a cool record deal was offered by Spanish label Locomotive Music. The next step was to start recordings of the debut album which was also entitled “My Darkness”. The album included all the songs from the MCD which was never released to public.
After the 2nd album “4:17 am”, the DVD “The First Chapter” and numerous changes in the line up, BTD had walked a full circle and it was once again Tuomas’ solo-project. Tuomas, the creative and a lttle bit excentric control freak explains: “I wrote lots of new material and felt like a newborn. The material was coming very easy and fast because I didn’t have a badly motivated band slowing me down anymore. Sounds like a hard thing to say but now when I have played almost 30 gigs in Finland and in Europe with my live action assault team (Lars, Juho, Aatu and Joel) things have been going so much easier. Finally I have the luxury of working with professionals. I am not the easiest person when it comes to playing in a band with me. I demand a lot and want everybody to work hard. I also have a very clear vision what is going to happen with the music and with the band in general.”
With Lars and Juho he then recorded the third BTD-album “The Ghost” in early 2006. Lars was for the first time doing all the clean vocals on this album. Tuomas’ creative output lead also to another album he also wrote in the same time, namely “The Darkness” for his other project DAWN OF SOLACE. After many gigs in 2006 the live assault team became solid members of BTD in the end. Changing the label from Locomotive to Stay Heavy (THE SCOURGER), and for the European release to CYCLONE EMPIRE (e.g. EVOCATION, DEMONICAL, COUNT RAVEN, THE SCOURGER, SOLSTICE) the new album was still done mostly by Tuomas but in the beginning of 2007 the line up got finally completed when the old BTD-drummer Dani (played already on “My Darkness” and “4:17am”) came back to make the band a solid band after 2 years of time.
‚Deadlight’ received mostly enthusiastic reviews and reactions (e.g. pos.4 in German METAL HAMMER-soundcheck, pos.9 in German ROCK HARD-soundcheck, 12 of 15 points in German LEGACY (pos.9 in the soundcheck), 11,5 of 12 points in www.ancientspirit.de or 9,5 of 10 points in www.stalker.cd,...) and with their 2nd single „Faithless“ they reached once more pos.2 in Finnish single-charts.