The Murder Of My Sweet, named after a film from the 1940’s, are a new band from Mind’s Eye drummer/songwriter/all round busy guy Daniel Flores and he has seen fit to call in fellow Mind’s Eye bassist Johan Niemann (also of Therion), guitarist Daniel Palmqvist (who released an excellent instrumental album on Lion Music a few years ago), keyboardist Andreas Lindahl (Iron Mask) and introduces new vocalist Angelica Rylin who voice is about as good as I have heard in the female rock stakes, possessing a voice that manages to maintain its own identity too. 

Musically this is probably the most commercial stuff Flores has done. That said its not a million miles away in terms of overall grandeur, melodic content and quality that Mind’s Eye poured out on their  excellent “A Gentleman’s Hurricane” album and even shares sonic similarities.  However, the more progressive qualities of M.E. are not present and there is a keener pop edge here as, lets be honest, this is aimed at mass appeal and radio play and I don’t hear any reason why this doesn’t deserve that by the bucket load.   

“No Evil” and “Follow The Rain” are melodically rich, with modern riffage and nice orchestration, there is enough here to please most rock fans and even Emo’s might raise a smile from this! Lead single “Bleed Me Dry” is home to a strong chorus and chosen as the lead single for obvious reasons.    The rest of the album follows a similar suit for the remainder and after a while, although it does maintain interest all becomes a little familiar.  Metal heads out there will get more enjoyment one suspects from the likes of “One Bullet” where Palmqvist gets to crack out a powerhouse of a riff and if there had been a couple more tracks like this; where the  guitar dominates to bring it out of its overall orchestrated sound where the guitars take a more overall backing theme then I would be playing this album to death. That said, I suspect my ears are not the target audience of the band and someone more into this type of music may well have a different view. But the fact I have actually got into this album somewhat where other "heavyweights" of this style have failed wins brownie points.

Overall this IS a fine album, for someone that never got into the whole Evanescence thing (such as myself) this is far more pleasing to these ears and overall its an album I have returned to a lot over the last few weeks; although it has to be said after track 6 my attention starts to drift a little. Whilst it has very positive strengths, it does ultimately lacks something that makes it totally killer  for me but I really hope this brings the success its members deserve.  I also hope that Frontiers have the clout to really bring this to mainstream pop radio attention (as that's its true home) and I look forward to album number 2 to see where the bands sound goes.