Crossroad to Damnation – Frozen in Time

Releasedate: 2010;
By: Sabine van Gameren

Crossroad to Damnation is a Dutch Progressive metal band. The band started in 2008 and this is their first demo.

The first song on this demo is exactly the one that makes most impression. It starts with a short intro before the vocals get introduced. The clean vocals start quite ok, but during the song they lose power and strength which makes it a bit too boring. Grunts refresh it all a bit, but could have been deeper.
The second song “The Selfproclamed” starts of impressive, but loses speed in the core of the song when jazzy parts come in. The tempo gets out of it and the song which did not radiate much strength either falls totally out of scene with it. It’s a pity as the song got into the right direction with its start. Also the mix between the grunts and the clean vocals did not really make sense here. The grunts are mostly there until the clean vocals come in at a point the speed gets out of it again.
As final song “Crossroad To Damnation” the band have decided to start calm to build up in tension a bit. Unfortunately the band never gets to the point where it really makes an impression. A good idea for this band would to find their borders in extremes. Make the difference between the uptempo parts and the slower jazzy parts more obvious and create more tension in the music to keep people’s interest with the music.

Line Up:
Johan van der Meijden – Vocals and grunts
Mark Roelofs – Guitar
Mark van Veen – Guitar and vocals
Sander Dammingh – Bass and grunts
Patrick van Mourik – Drums/percussion

Links:
Crossroad to Damnation MySpace