Cry Of Dawn is the feature vehicle for Swedish vocalist great Goran Edman, this time partnering with one of Frontiers Records’ in-house producers, Daniel Flores (Find Me, Murder Of My Sweet). Daniel has had a busy year, with First Signal and Palace already under his belt and Toby Hitchcock still to come.
I’ve never found a Goran Edman album I don’t like and this is no different. He is one of those vocalists that just delivers time after time and it hardly needs stating that he sounds a million dollars here again. Flores again enlists Michael Palace to supply guitars, so it’s not surprising to find the musical bed of this project very similar to those others just mentioned.
Cry Of Dawn’s musical mission is not too far removed from that of Street Talk which he also fronts.
It’s not very often I’ll say this – but this time around there are too many keyboards. The absolute saturation of swirling keys on every track is just too much. There’s not enough room for the songs to breathe in my opinion.
Of course Edman does a killer job and most of the songs are pretty catchy. There’s plenty to like about the opener Chance and the slightly heavier Tell It To My Heart has a great bridge then chorus hook.
Light A Light and Can’t Go On are both very Street Talk in their sound and again feature killer choruses.
Hands Around My Heart is a beautiful ballad, but slightly overdone with the keyboards again.
I can’t stand the chorus in the second track Listen To Me, which is a shame, that ultra high vocal just grates on me. It’s probably the only weaker track here, there are others that don’t stand out as much as others, but nothing forgettable.
I love the vocals, I really love a few of the songs and the consistency of the album is a credit to the songwriters. I’m not so much a fan of the production style. As stated, I think the keyboards are way overdone and there’s not enough individual character in the album to make it stand out as a new band to rival those that came before them.
If you have the last First Signal and Find Me releases, you know exactly how this is going to sound. It’s good, but not quite as good as expected.
