Album review: THE MURDER OF MY SWEET – A Gentleman’s Legacy

Frontiers [Release date: 10.12.21]

The Murder Of My Sweet’s latest release, A Gentleman’s Legacy, is a concept album, with a plot worthy of some of the better psychological thriller writers we may have encountered over the years.

The band is the brainchild of Chilean, Daniel Flores, musician, writer and producer. His history and track record is well documented. The …. Legacy is the second instalment of the story begun by his “other band”, Minds Eye, called A Gentleman’s Hurricane (2007).

It is a tale spun around a daughter’s pursuit of the people who corrupted her father (The Illuminati). It touches on Catholicism, guilt and ultimately focuses on remorse. That might sound a bit Dan Brown, but there’s a satisfying complexity to the music, and an undercurrent of sharp, subliminal satire running through the album … like hearing Reagan mouthing platitudes during a radio interview.

Flores is adept at creating sonic images to reflect the story in the lyrics.

The compressed, claustrophobic harmonies, on ’6 Feet Under’ perfectly frame the entry of the daughter/ avenging angel … as she ominously declares “it’s time now”. He goes on to look at the bigger picture in the jolting, densely constructed ‘Damnation’. It’s a melodramatic approach that is not there just to set a mood, but to help illustrate the story. It works.

In parallel, the songs, for the most part, are succesful marriages of words and melody. Some songs are more musical than others. In the same way that the best Abba material is classically inspired, on ‘A Ghost Of Of A Chance’, where vocalist Angelica Rylin sounds at her most vulnerable, the music moves through a swooping, sweeping wash of sound into a fabulously melodic chorus.

‘Wheels’ too echoes the sound of popular rock culture. The song is perhaps as much symphonic rock as progrock, but in pared back form, aping the commercial sound of Phil Collins’s chart busting stint fronting Genesis.

We won’t give away the ending. Suffice to say that Flores and his inventive music will run and run. ****

Review by Brian McGowan

Featured Artist: JOSH TAERK

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Power Plays w/c 11 November 2024

ARCANE MOON Hello Sun (indie)
S8NT ELEKTRIC XTC (Long Branch Records)
ARCANA KINGS Here We Go (Curtain Call Records)
KLOGR face The Unknown (Zeta Factory)
BEYOND UNBROKEN Dance With The Dead (FiXT)
REVENGIN Decadent Feeling (Wormholedeath)

Featured Albums w/c 11 November 2024

09:00-12:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Rock)
12:00-13:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Melodic Hard Rock)
14:00-16:00 The Best of 2003-2023 (Singer Songwriter)