Album Review: Serious Black - As Daylight Breaks

I hate to use the term 'supergroup'. Most of the time, the bands that get stuck with that label are pieced together from parts of other bands that are not quite so super. We've lowered our standards, and now anyone whose name you might have heard before qualifies to be a member of one. When Cream formed, they were three of the very best in the world at what they did. Today's supergroups don't come anywhere near that level of fame or acclaim, which makes it impossible for the next real supergroup to get the respect they deserve. Serious Black is not a supergroup, but they are a band made up of veterans who know exactly what they're doing. You've heard many of the names before; Thomen Stauch, Roland Grapow, and Urban breed. They might get you to notice Serious Black, but the music is what will make or break the band.

Looking at the roster, and hearing the first single “I Seek No Other Life”, you might expect the album to be a full-throated power metal album that hits hard and fast. That was actually my biggest fear after hearing that track, so it's with great relief that the rest of the album does not follow that track. There are still a couple of songs that are short and sweet, like the nod-and-wink “Trail Of Murder”, but most of the album is a more subtle variety of metal that I was anticipating.

With Stauch and Grapow in the band, it's not unreasonable to assume the album will be heavy on the drums and guitar, but the dominant feature of these songs is actually Urban breed, who puts in a performance different from any of his other bands. Perhaps it is a function of having so many veterans on board to share the songwriting duties, but the melodies are more overlapping and circuitous than I'm used to hearing from Urban.

In fact, I would describe “As Daylight Breaks” as being a unique mixture of power metal and AOR. In that sense, it is a far more interesting album than the group's histories would lead you to believe. There are plenty of moments with the drums driving a heavy beat, but just as often the songs pull back enough to have some soft and soaring melodies. Urban is usually an overpowering presence, but here he is more restrained in his performance, mixing with the rest of the band more than he did on his own Trail Of Murder album.

The places where the album struggles a bit are in the songs that are more paint-by-numbers, the short and sweet power metal numbers. When the band expands upon that sound a bit, the results are far more engaging. The “Temple Of The Sun/Akhenaten” combination, along with “My Mystic Mind” are fantastic songs that have a perfect balance of heft and melody. Urban's voice is gorgeous in the title track, a soft ballad that is quite moving.

Serious Black is a band that has enormous promise, because every member has been around long enough to have made the mistakes that bands inevitably go through early in their careers. Players of this quality are probably incapable of making a bad record. “As Daylight Breaks” isn't the grand slam I was hoping for, but it's still a great album that provides more than enough reasons to listen to it. Like all bands, it can take some time to find your footing as a new creative entity. I think that's what is happening with Serious Black. They've already made a very good album, and written some great songs, but the best will be yet to come, once they've found their voice.