This is a French band that has had some tour supports with Girlschool and by the sounds of the extremely brief press blog, has played at the likes of Hellfest. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean they were handpicked for these events but I am more than sure the experience was golden. This is presented in a nice digi-pack with printed recording details in French but the lyrics are sung and written in English just for reference. They play a lazy laid back style of hard rock, akin to my mind like early 90’s bands playing as if their life depended upon it, or rather playing in the face of adversity as grunge was taking over. That said, Wild Dawn does have a big grunge influence in their sound. Opener ‘Back on Track’ is very Gruntruck and ‘Better Days’ is verging more towards the Seattle style to a certain extent, I am no expert though, I hated this genre.
Although, more modern music specialists may point to the arrangements sounding like the current crop of young rockers who are trying to capture the spirit of the previous two generations, like some of the Scandinavian bands of late, Wild Dawn don’t have the same momentum compared to some of their peers, these are foggy, dense songs that sounds lazy by a band going through the motions and being very subdued about it. Some high octane screams would be nice once in a while, but perhaps it’s fitting by comparison to the many early 90’s releases that sounded like this, it’s not comparable to 70’s rock in my mind which I think is where Wild Dawn are trying to lay their hat. I may sound harsh and it does play well to be fair with the sounds honed quite tightly around their inner band nucleus, but I don’t get any excitement out of the album, other than trying to find a band that Wild Dawn sound like on the majority of the twelve tracks on offer. To give them a chance, I have played this CD into double figures to try and gain some further enlightenment, mores the pity, it didn’t work, I still found myself waning.
This is a laid back hard rock album, but perhaps it is actually a little too laid back as I have found my attention wandering on more than one occasion. Not a bad album, but ‘Pay Your Dues’ lacks any individual charisma or emotion.
(5/10 Paul Maddison)
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