RPWL - A New Dawn album review

Live recording of German proggers’ multimedia show

Cover art for RPWL - A New Dawn album

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Somewhere over the last 40 years, prog lost its sense of theatre. Partly, no doubt, because many of its modern exponents can no longer afford to stage concerts in castles made of ice or floating amphitheatres. So the show that RPWL put on in their native Bavaria to showcase 2014’s Wanted album – complete with spoof TV reports, invading armour-clad legions and live sword fights – was a refreshingly ambitious affair that impresses on the DVD equivalent of this release.

While the live CD version cuts some of the spoken-word elements, the music stands up on its own regardless. In particular, the marching anthemics of Swords And Guns and Still Asleep’s Final Cut-style melancholia are stirring and haunting in equal measure, whatever the medium.

Johnny Sharp

Johnny is a regular contributor to Prog and Classic Rock magazines, both online and in print. Johnny is a highly experienced and versatile music writer whose tastes range from prog and hard rock to R’n’B, funk, folk and blues. He has written about music professionally for 30 years, surviving the Britpop wars at the NME in the 90s (under the hard-to-shake teenage nickname Johnny Cigarettes) before branching out to newspapers such as The Guardian and The Independent and magazines such as Uncut, Record Collector and, of course, Prog and Classic Rock