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I was not too sure what to think about Eclectika when I first got this promo. Is this some sort of progressive act, gothic maybe, electro-metal or what? This French trio is made of two vocalists, male and female and a multi-instrumentalist called Sebastien Regnier. He composed all the music and lyrics, took care of the artwork and engineering too.

Opening up with some sad-sounding symphonic keyboards instrumental called "The End", Dazzling Dawn moves up to a fast, distorted guitar work tune with rasps and female vocals, to finally end up with acoustic guitar arpeggios. Thais is the idea behind this album. There are quite a few instrumental pieces where the keyboards create either an orchestral, epic or dramatic décor. You then have the actual songs, which remain mostly in the black metal genre. You have a pretty nice mix bag of colors and tones here. Unfortunately, this disc has some flaws too. For one thing, they use a drum machine with the un-natural and mechanical sound, and it is sometimes punch deficient. I also found the songwriting clumsy at times. Finally, there are the female vocals. They are sometimes operatic, no problem with tha, but when they are used in their regular mode, they are a bit dissonant and off key.

In general, Dazzling Dawn is a nicely cinematic and slightly progressive black metal release.