Incrave - Dead End

Published April 08 2008

*=Staff's pick	Shattered* The Forgotten* A Shadow In The Dark The Touch Of Death Unveil The Truth Shades Of Me* An Empty Soul Scream In Silence Never More* Dead End

Genre	Heavy Metal	Johan Falk	Vocals
Tracks	10	Jon Bålefalk	Guitar
Runningtime	43 Min.	David Ohlsson	Guitar
Label	Ulterium Records	Martin Davidsson	Bass
Release	25 April 2008	Josef Davidsson	Drums
Country	Sweden	Jonathan Stenberg	Keyboard
Similar artists	Tad Morose, Nocturnal Rites, Morgana Lefay

A diamond in the rough. That's how I labelled the debut album from Evergrace released in 2006. Since then the band has changed its name and is now working under the moniker of Incrave (a wise decision considering the similarity with another Swedish outfit; Evergrey). The debut album was a more than decent effort but lacked variation, strong choruses and originality but that aside really showed that they had great potential.

Has the change of their band name also affected their musical direction you might ask? Well, not at all I have to say after several listening sessions with Dead End. It's still melodic heavy metal with a dark touch and the obvious similarity with Tad Morose is still there. This time the melodies have improved vastly though and it's an even effort without the inclusion of fillers. On a song like The Forgotten the melody patterns remind me a great deal of Nocturnal Rites and this piece is definitely the finest hour of Dead End. Johan Falk is still a good vocalist, no doubt about that, but he has a tendency of using the same vocal melodies over and over but since the guitar melodies is much better than before it's not at all as disturbing as it was on their debut album.

Even if their debut wasn't something that totally rocked my world I could sense the potential of this young band. On Dead End they have evolved in the right direction and adjusted most of the errors from before. They still have things to do about the variation and originality but the fact is that Dead End is a strong album from start to finish that most definitely should appeal to all fans of Tad Morose, Nocturnal Rites and Morgana Lefay.