Album Reviews

KROSSFIRE – Shades Of Darkness

Krossfire hails from Bulgaria, and has been flying under the radar screen for the past 15 years as mainly a live act, with just 1 full-length studio record to their credit before this 2016 release entitled Shades Of Darkness.  Krossfire’s a hybrid between Progressive-Power Metal and Symphonic Metal, incorporating good doses of atmospheric keyboards.  Musically, the band’s top notch and exciting, but vocally, Dimo Petkov’s neutered tones just don’t mesh well with Krossfire’s soundscape … actually, it’d be hard to imagine his voice blending in well with any type of Metal band … making Shades Of Darkness difficult to recommend. Songs from this new release will be featured at 6:00/18:00 CET & Midnight/Noon EST on the day indicated. All featured DAILY ALBUM PREMIERES will have a short review posted the day it’s on the show! The FRIDAY edition of the Daily Album Premiere show contains 3 tracks from each of the Daily Premiere Albums featured during the week. Be sure to tune in here!

Daily Album Premiere Show logo
Daily Album Premieres

DAILY ALBUM PREMIERES Week 23, 2016

Tune in the Daily Album Premiere Show to hear the finest metal releases just now hitting the streets! See this week’s schedule here! DAY BAND ALBUM Monday Withem The Unforgiving Road Tuesday Candlemass Death Thy Lover Wednesday Zarpa Dispuestos Para Atacar Thursday Krossfire Shades Of Darkness Songs from these new releases will be featured at 6:00/18:00 CET & Midnight/Noon EST on the days indicated. All featured albums will have a short review posted the day it’s on the show! The FRIDAY edition of the Daily Album Premiere show contains 3 tracks from each of the Daily Premiere Albums. Be sure to tune in here! See all the new albums on power rotation here! 

KROSSFIRE - Learning To Fly
Album Reviews

KROSSFIRE – Learning To Fly

Krossfire is a five-piece Power / Progressive Metal band hailing from Plovdiv, Bulgaria. The band was formed in 2001 by guitarist Georgi Koushev and bassist Georgi Driev. The band went through a few line-up changes and played locally for a few years to gain a solid fan base. They eventually released their first single in “Touch Of Destiny” in 2008, which received favorable reviews and ended up as part of a CD compilation for the German magazine “Heavy”. All of this publicity and a barrage of live performances catapulted them to release their debut album Learning To Fly. The music of Krossfire is extremely epic and theatrical. There are many orchestrated keyboard themes that give the tracks a pretentious, dramatic effect. This is clearly evident from the nearly three-minute instrumental opening “Visions”, which gives an exaggerated sensation of a major motion picture. This actually happens a couple times during the album; preceding the title track “Learning To Fly” is a similar two-minute introduction called “Icaria”. Adding to the many melodramatic themes heard throughout the album is the very over-the-top vocals of Dimo Petkov. Petkov has an extremely bold singing style. He sings with an incredible amount of force and power. There is no question Petkov has an extraordinary amount of talent as a singer… the problem is he contains such a forceful operatic style … it’s just not a great fit for this type of music. When comparing him to similar vocalists like Ralf Scheepers or Hansi Kürsch, they contain a more dynamic element that makes the music move around their words instead of pushing the vocals forward through the music. Materially, the tracks on Learning To Fly are all very eloquent and written very well. The compositions are well-thought out and have a natural flow. They do an excellent …READ MORE