Black Rose
A Light in the Dark

Roses of the black kind, and the Swedish kind, are what I am looking at today. The Swedish quartet makes it half dozen albums with this one and at first I figured that I had a couple of vinyls of theirs but it turned out to be from a British band with the same name. These guys have been around for a while now and the debut was released in 1993, since then there have been several demos, one EP and four more albums before this one. This new album is called A Light in the Dark but is it good enough to light up the darkness?

Original thinking isn’t lighting up the mood of the listener when playing through this album, it is classic hardrock with catchy choruses and pretty distinct riffs. Pretty much painted by numbers, with decent production and relatively good vocalist – nothing that really jumps out and strikes me as amazing. They keep it short though, and that is always a positive when making simplistic music without the depth to really make it stand for much scrutiny. The album feels a little bit predictable and doesn’t really capture me as a listener, my interest soon moves elsewhere.

Solid songs, pretty cool artwork, decent melodies and energy. I think Black Rose puts together an album aimed at those who enjoy the classic hardrock with distinct choruses, not much lyrical depth and decent energy. I loose interest for this album fairly quickly, sure there are quite good tracks but there are no real hits or standouts – the thing that stands out most from this album is the nice artwork, that is something I really like about this album. Fans of classic heavy metal might like more than the artwork, I think they might find this album quite good on all accounts.

Even when I look to be really kind I can’t help but missing that defining hit song and the novelty that makes it fun to listen to a new album. This feels just familiar and like something I have heard very many times before making it quite difficult to really manage to write something really exciting about it. For the fans of classic hardrock I think this will be an interesting and good choice, so if you are one of those you should check this album out.

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