CLOUDSCAPE – Crimson Skies

Crimson Skies is the second full-length album for Cloudscape, coming on the heels of their self-titled debut from late 2004. Prior to that, the quintet released a handful of hard-to-find demos.

Cloudscape plays a melodic style of Metal with a bit of a Progressive edge, with lots of keyboards, tasteful soloing, and strong, smooth vocals provided by lead singer Mike Andersson.

If you’re into more traditional Heavy Metal, you might be a little bit disappointed by Crimson Skies: while there are hard-hitting moments throughout the album, it’s not a particularly heavy disc, focusing more on melody. Still, there are numerous good riffs from guitarists Bjorn Eliasson and Patrik Svard, and many of the leads and solos they come up with are rather impressive, keeping the album interesting from start to finish. You won’t bang your head listening to Crimson Skies, but you’ll probably tap your foot a lot, and maybe air-guitar along with some of the better solos.

Most of the songs on Crimson Skies are of the mid-tempo, upbeat variety, with catchy melodies, memorable choruses, a bit of bombast, and lots of instrumental flourishes; these guys are talented musically, but they never show off. Andersson (who also handles keyboard duties with Eliasson) is a good frontman, possessing identity and a strong voice with good range.

As far as keyboards go on the album, they accentuate the music in a variety of interesting ways, and never drown out the rest of the instrumentation. “Breach In My Sanity” has very cool old-fashioned keyboard parts, that when combined with strong vocals and some nice riffing, help make this one of the better songs on the album.

Crimson Skies is one of those albums that gets better as it goes along, with most of the prime cuts coming near the end: besides “Breach In My Sanity,” “Demon Tears,” “1000 Souls,” and album-closer “Will We Remain” are pretty good too. “Demon Tears” has a good, dark atmosphere, making it stand out. None of the earlier songs are bad, but they seem to run together a little, making it hard to pick out the standout tracks. Cloudscape is definitely good at what they do (and they’re assisted by a slick, solid production job), but they’ll probably remind you of a few other bands that play a similar style.

Nevertheless, Crimson Skies is a solid disc of punchy, melodic Heavy Metal.