Grand Design
Thrill of the Night

Swedish rawkers Grand Design offer us the thrill of the night, the cold and the dark, the bats and the full moon and all those other night time things. This is their third album, their previous two has been reviewed here at Hallowed having an average rating of 3.5 meaning that they haven’t quite been falling into favour with us. Maybe this time? After all they do have a song named 10 Outta 10 which might indicate what they are hoping that the reviewers should think. And of course the usual suspects have already given them those ratings. Masterpiece they say, I say something different but then again I never seem to agree with those overly positive reviewers that plague the net.

Musically it is more or less the same as before, maybe with a touch more of eighties glam but it is styled as music long since forgotten. The ten tracks play for slightly less than fifty minutes and the singer sounds like one of Huey, Dewey, or Louie from the Duck Tales animated series. The production is also a little bit tame, it could have had a bit more bite. The tracks have plenty of energy and ooze of a band enjoying what they do. I think that they offer something we have heard before, and maybe not something offering anything really substantial to the melodic rock/hardrock genre. Decent variation over the album as well, the songs you can expect from an album like this are all accounted for.

I don’t really know about this album, I didn’t like it in the slightest after hearing it two or three times but it grows somewhat on you and I kind of like it now. I will however never hold it up to the Masterpiece standard, far from it. It is the band’s best effort to date but they really do need to change the way the vocals are sung, I never like Dewey’s voice in Duck Tales and I think Mr Saether sound just the same and it doesn’t really fit this kind of music. The production should also have a had a bit more bite, it feels a tad tame and all in all this is a quite good album but it never really takes off despite having several songs with plenty of energy.

The opening track, 10 Outta 10 and Who’s Gonna Rawk you Tonite are the highlights of this album. These are enjoyable tracks but the vocals sort of ruins them slightly and in the end all I can think of is why does the singer sound like Dewey or Huey, or maybe Louie? It doesn’t make no sense and to be honest the Duck Tales intro song is better than any on this album. Nevertheless it is still quite good but it just doesn’t rawk well enough to really shine.

HHHHHHH