Van Canto Dawn Of The Brave Review by Amelia

Score: 8.5/10

Formed in 2006, Van Canto are a unique quintet singing what they call "hero metal a capella". The band consists of two lead singers with the rest of the members mimicking guitars, bass and keys.

Current Line-up:

Dennis Schunke - lead vocals

Inga Scharf - lead vocals

Ross Thompson - higher guitar vocals

Stefan Schmidt - lower guitar vocals, solo guitar vocals

Ingo Sterzinger - bass vocals

Bastian Emig - drums 

Tracklisting:

01 Dawn of the Brave

02 Fight For Your Life

03 To The Mountains

04 Badaboom

05 The Final Countdown

06 Steel Breaker

07 The Awakening

08 The Other Ones

09 Holding Out For A Hero

10 Unholy

11 My Utopia

12 Into The West

13 Paranoid

Dawn of the Brave opens with an intro, quickly questioning the listener asking "what's to come next". It also proposes their genre to those who are new to the band. This then proceeds onto the first song of the album called "Fight For Your Life" which delves into inspirational lyrical themes. In particular, the second song on the album "To The Mountains" is one of my favourites as it tells a story about a warrior who was called to go into battle with an old friend. While I admire bands such as Rhapsody Of Fire who compose songs with similar lyrical themes, this song was right up my street.

"Badaboom" is the next song on the album. The band recorded a video for this song where they dressed up as iconic metal musicians. The message I gathered having watched the video is that, the music business is changing. The music business needs instruments to be able to continue successfully, however, it has been proven that music can be created without instruments. The video then goes on to suggest that, if all instruments suddenly vanished, musicians would become lost and the music business would collapse. 

"The Final Countdown" by Europe is the first cover song listeners come to on the album. When I read that the band were to cover this song, I was curious as to how it would sound. It's a cover song so it's different when comparing it to the original version. The band have added their own touches to the song and all in all, I really like the way it turned out. 

It would be impossible for me to review "Dawn of the Brave" without talking about "Into The West". As some of you already know, I'm a fan of J.R.R Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings film trilogy by Peter Jackson. Whilst I love the original song (sung by Annie Lennox of The Eurythmics), Van Canto have again, added their own touches to the song and have forever embedded a smile upon my face. 

On previous releases, Van Canto have had guest musicians sing on their cover and original songs. Some of the names included are Chris Boltendahl (Grave Digger), Tony Kakko (Sonata Arctica) and Jokaim Broden (Sabaton). On this album, there aren't any guest musicians. A part from "Dawn of the Brave", "A Storm To Come" is the only other Van Canto album to not include a guest singer.