NEW DAY RISING

Having listened only to samples of Von Hertzen Brothers' music previously, I was intrigued to receive this promo of ''New Day Rising''. With a first spin, one might wonder if this band is actually Finnish, since their sound resembles heavily to popular (Brit and American) rock bands.

The good thing is that there is a lot to say about this album and band; the bad is that not a lot is overly positive...

''New Day Rising'' is a generally well-made pop-rock album with catchy melodies, a talented vocalist in Mikko von Hertzen (who can sound like Eddie Vedder, Bono, Thom Yorke, Herman Saming, you name it) and a more-than-strong commercial approach. Strong influences on this album come from U2 and Coldplay (e.g. New Day Rising, Sunday Child), Muse and Radiohead with tracks ranging from straight-rockers such as ''You Don't Know My Name'' (with a hint of Hawkwind space psychedelia) and ''Trouble'' (heavy mid-tempo with oriental and Sabbathy touches) through to disappointing ballads such as ''Black Rain'' or ''Hibernating heart'' and light hearted indie radio tunes such as ''Hold me Up'' and ''Dreams''.

One might ask, where is the prog? Well, there are scattered references to Moon Safari and Muse, and it gets more interesting in ''Love Burns'' (reminding me of A.C.T.) and the 70's-oriented groovy ''The Destitute'', which along with ''Trouble'' make up the highlights of this album. The flow of the album is complicated, since it starts with 3 relatively steady rockers and then turns to a much softer mood. The lyrics seem to be dominated by love themes to the extreme, which doesn't help. The positive is that there is fair variety of (alternative, indie, hard) rock sounds that might appeal to the general radio rock audience and might satisfy the very, very open minded proggers out there. Thus, if you don't mind a well-done pop-rock album along with glimpses of modern prog and can tolerate lyrics such as ''my heart is like a hibernating Romeo...'', you will enjoy this. Some of its parts I certainly did but I found it equally frustrating that the band don't use the full potential of their apparent talent.

Thanks to Freeman Promotions for the promo.