Age of Reflection
A New Dawn

This was good! That is about all I thought about this album, I have listened to it many times now and the lasting impression is the cover song. (I Just) Died in Your Arms that was made by Cutting Crew in its original version, it is the only song that stands out when playing the second album of this Swedish band. The first one we saw as a pretty generic AOR release, pretty boring actually. This is clearly a step forward with better songs and especially that cover that is also the only really unexpected thing they offer.

As the name suggests, it is AOR that is the genre and it isn’t really the dawning of something new for said genre. We get the expected selection of songs, with the slightly unexpected cover to spice it up. It is pretty catchy and really well produced, excellent production in fact. The vocalist is pretty good as well; the craftsmanship is solid and gives us what can be expected from something in the AOR genre. There are no surprises when it comes to the songs that are penned by these guys, but at least they write more interesting songs this time and the album feels a lot more interesting than the debut.

A really solid album with good and well-crafted songs, there isn’t too much really negative aspects to it and AOR fans should be relatively satisfied with this album if they get it. The thing that you can spin a bit negatively is that the far superior song on the album is the cover song, a good song in its original guise and probably even better when performed by Age of Reflection. Why don’t they write songs that are as good themselves? It is a question that comes up every now and then, perhaps it is because the cover song gained fame and success because it was original when it was first made and it has remained so because it was before all the copies, and the original songs by the bands aren’t really that original just different versions of songs that have been made many times before – a bit harsh perhaps but also a bit true.

A New Dawn shows a very improved band and if they keep improving like this they will make something really interesting the next time, but A New Dawn isn’t very exciting or interesting. It is good enough not to disappoint the potential buyer but not really good enough to keep them listening for any extended period of time. I really like that cover song but otherwise it is just another solid AOR release.

HHHHHHH