Nighthawk – Six Three O
Release Date: 1st August 2025
Label: Mighty Music
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Hard Rock, AOR.
FFO: The Night Flight Orchestra, Captain Black Beard, Boston, The Hellacopters.
Review By: Paul Franklin
In the mid-seventies, a Japanese solider was discovered on a small island in the Philippines. Forgotten and isolated, he believed that nothing had changed in the outside world and that the war always still going on. Why is this relevant to a review of an album by a Swedish rock band? Well, based upon listening to Six Three 0 you could be forgiven for thinking that he was not the only one to have been culturally isolated for decades.
The eleven tracks here just sound old, and not in a cool retro, looking back and embracing your influences kinda way. They just sound like a collection of songs from 50 years ago (although granted the production is better).
With titles like Hard Rock Warrior, Wrong Side of Desire and Angel of Mine and the ostentatious keyboard flourishes, the whole thing is cheesier than a backstage fondue buffet at the Eurovision Song Contest.
Having said that, the production is better than it would have been back in the seventies, it’s also smoothed off every possible rough edge and corner to such a point that even the most jobs-worthy Health and Safety Inspector couldn’t find any fault.
And it’s all so serious. There’s no tongue-in-cheekiness, or nodding winks that make other bands in this genre fun. It’s all pomp and no circumstance.
In the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy the main characters find themselves on an ‘Ark’ spaceship that has been launched to rid a planet of it’s most mediocre and pointless citizens, on the basis of this album, if that spaceship needed a house band!
(2 / 5)
