Love the band's name, but the demo's title 'Hateballads 2008' suck! You won't hear any ballads here. And this is not very hate-filled stuff, simply because Chromatic Dark have an ability to shape into too many different things. This second demo proves that.

'Punishment' begins with straightforward melodic metal with raspy throat vocals. You can absolutely hear where the band come from... The song's chorus owes to Sentenced and Eternal Tears Of Sorrow without a doubt. Then the band start to throw in some elements, that mould the song into a Chromatic Dark song. Although no big things, the pieces of synth work, guitar melodies, varying beats and such bring in a lot of colour. 'Punishment' consists of many elements; I can hear melancholic Finnishness, Gothenburg metal, progressive elements, and movie music stylings in this song alone. 'Into Nothingness' is more twisted with constantly transforming motifs. Surely there's some strong Dark Tranquillity moments in its guitar and synth works, but also some alluring inversed and asynchronicity. 'Front Lines' can be depicted with the same examples, even though it does not get as adventurous as 'Into Nothingness', but what it does is that it introduces more electronics. 'The Last One' ends the demo in a slower, more sombre note, even though I wouldn't call this piano-driven song a ballad, because it is pretty epic after all. All in all, Chromatic Dark have penned some memorable songs for sure, although there's pretty much variety in the first three of 'em. The band dropped off some of their debut's ('Obsidious' from 2006) heaviness, but probably therefore gained more variety here. The music also has a nice character of its own, even though it's very esay at times to draw lines to some of the influencing bands.

The sound is close to a studio album quality, and that is a huge step towards the right direction after the horrible sound quality of the debut demo. Every instrument is heard nicely, and it even kicks in the bass-levels, but it is not very well-balanced. The debut demo had one positive thing: It was rough, and this demo sounds a bit too nice in the comparison. One thumb up for pretty good synthesizer work with not-too-basic sounds. I love that Vangelis worship on the first song... The band's performance is very good indeed, instrument-by-instrument. The music is pretty multi-dimensional at times, but the vocals are quite one-dimensional, even there's some bark in them.

Chromatic Dark have taken some huge step into right direction, especially in the song-writing department, because they sound more of themselves here. They sit perfectly next to one of my favourite adventurous Finnish melodic metal bands, Blind Stare, minus the symphonic elements that Chromatic Dark do not have. Hey, I didn't mean to compare the bands directly anyways... Chromatic Dark are well-cooked for bigger things than merely demos.

Reviewed by Lane
03/16/2009 19:30