DAWN, a Swiss Symphonic Prog rock band. How often have you heard those bunch of words thrown together?

Though Switzerland gave us Montreux, the city that has become the haven of rock legends ever since that famous fire incident during a FRANK ZAPPA concert there in 1971 (which inspired DEEP PURPLE that were in the crowd to write one of the most legendary rock hymns of all time "Smoke on the Water"), we don't hear too often the phrase "Swiss" + "Prog" together.
That fact alone got me intrigued about this band. I was pleasantly surprised by how good they are, I listened to the album Darker, their second studio album, Its style resembles the biggest of canons of prog legends: GENESIS, ELP, KING CRIMSON. That in it's own is a huge compliment.

One of the reasons the album sound as great as all of the above is DAWN's keyboard sounds and their chord progressions, so thank you Nicolas Gerber for tempering all of those different keyboard sounds into perfection making you a super-being of a TONY BANKS and KEITH EMERSON combined in just one man. On vocals and guitars René Degoumois manages to give us that occasional STEVE HACKETT sound with the slow attack, and at other times he puts his focus on very well built solos. His voice reminded me of the unique wonderful voice of ROINE STOLT (THE FLOWER KINGS) yet him being a tenor while Roine is more of a Baritone makes his voice still sound like it's one of a kind. One note I have to mention, since I am the critic here, is that the English accent is not too good, that bothered me. Sometimes a foreign English accent can sound cool/exsotic and add that extra something (good example - BJORK), but here I felt like it wasn't the case, it was the main thing that made me unable to actively like the vocals enough.

The track I liked best might be the least complex one from this album: track 4 "Lullabies For Gutterflies" though it's based on just one riff that keeps developing, I was completely mesmerized by it and by the time the guitar solo appeared I just knew I had to listen to that track in repeat.

A problem I had with the full experience of listening to "Darker" as a whole was that as much as I am a huge Prog rock freak, It took me a very long time to be able to muster the patience to listen to the entire album in one go. The long tracks on the album are all mini-masterpieces, you could say that you feel like you're going through an entire album with every long track, I felt like each of the songs from "Darker" was a little "Supper's Ready" or "Thick as a Brick" of its own. If you're a big classic Prog rock buff like me, you know that you usually want to give all of your attention to just one album at a time. So here I felt like I am listening to 5 albums within one album, a bit of a weird experience.

After saying that, I can recommend that you DO listen to this album, but in parts, once I accepted the fact that listening to an album in small portions is an agreeable method of listening to a Prog album, I can admit I enjoyed DAWN's "Darker" a lot better, and it was easier to digest and enjoy it.