Mechanical Swan – Black Dawn Romance

Band: Mechanical Swan
Album: Black Dawn Romance
Record Label: Bakerteam Records
Release Date: April 23rd 2013
Reviewed By: Dan Peeke
Track Listing:

1.     No Tears No Cry
2.     Memories
3.     Human
4.     Tear Me Down
5.     Emerald Bird
6.     If You
7.     In Your Room (Depeche Mode)
8.     My Lonely Life
9.     Black Dawn Romance

This album is a cross between AC/DC, Megadeth, Linkin Park, Depeche Mode and The Prodigy, all composed by Mozart. It’s a very clever album overall, but is it good? Hmm…

The first 2 tracks, No Tears No Cry and Memories, are both very average, unfortunately. They don’t draw in the listener or have an impact on getting people to listen further into the album. They both sound like Linkin Park rip offs. Memories is the better of the two, and an up point to it, is the similarity in singer Pasquali Matteo to Dave Mustaine in places.  

Human introduces the orchestral structure of some of the songs on the album, it’s brilliantly put together and a welcome change from the opening tracks. Track 4, Tear Me Down really shows hope for this album, and begins to develop the rise in good songs here. It shows the potential of this band, a good electro-rock song, even if it’s full of annoying clichéd lyrics.

Emerald Bird features female Italian vocalist, Alice Sacchi. It opens with a beautiful piano intro, and goes into the now staple electronic riff. It was at this point my computer decided it didn’t like this song and that it should turn its self off, ruining the brilliant start to the track. But when we returned, the genius pairing of the two voices made a stunning song, filled with catchy hooks and a guitar solo to fight the likes of Slash.

The next song, If You, is a slow ballad, it’s not bad, but not as catchy as some of the songs before it, but unlike some of the songs before, it is guitar driven. Track 7 is called In Your Room, and it’s a well thought out cover of the Depeche Mode classic. Not as good as the original, but no covers are, with the exception of All Along The Watchtower by Jimi Hendrix. This cover does the original song justice, however, and shows that not only can Mechanical Swan write some good songs, they can cover well.

My Lonely Life is another average and monotonous ballad type track, full of disjointed vocal melodies and boring instrumentation. Black Dawn Romance on the other hand is a much more upbeat and interesting song to listen to, and it again brings out the Linkin Park vocal style. It’s a good song, not brilliant, but it is well written, and again very well structured, brings a good end to the album.

Black Dawn Romance is a fairly good debut for Mechanical Swan, but to succeed in the crowded electro-rock scene, they need to really up their game, and make all their songs as interesting as others.

Score: 6 out of 10

Readers album score: {extravote 1}