Consisting of two-thirds of Screams Silence (Hagen Schneevoigt, Rene Gödde – particularly as Scream Silence singer Hardy Fietig produces the TOD records and also owns the releasing label), it might be an easy task to categorize what TUNES OF DAWN is about. And you are even right. But that these Berlin-based gents are nowadays ranging in the same genre is the result of a 15 years spanning career, seeing the band once gotten of the grid as a death metal band (under a different name), growing, evolving and developing, ending up in 2008 with the fourth and most matured record entitled Of Tragedies In The Morning & Solutions In The Evening.
The raw and edgy approach of the predecessor How Is This Going To End got polished, and a certain punk and rock’n’roll attitude is gone, more or less. But this record still offers a bunch of powerful and driving gothic rock songs, solemn, epical, melancholy-draped and timeless, but sometimes also melodramatic, with a sarcastic undertone, caricaturing genre-typical clichés and always winking. As for me my faves and highlights are found on the second half of Of Tragedies In The Morning & Solutions In The Evening, beginning with A Love Ends Suicide, via Gloomy Sunday up to Immortal. These songs are just mesmerizing! To bring back a little bit of a rock’n’roll attitude again Motorcycle Baby reflects the band’s past and Death Is Beautiful much flirts with Type O Negatively stylistic means ;)
Singer and four-stringer Hagen Schneevoigt hypnotizes with his singing and TUNES OF DAWN deservedly share the league with Dreadful Shadows, Type O Negative and The 69 Eyes. Just the Hammond-like keyboards are sometimes a bit too strong, in my opinion.
Nevertheless, Of Tragedies In The Morning & Solutions In The Evening is a wonderful piece of music, full of romantic and melancholic moments to wallow in.