Studio demo

Crayven is a Heavy Metal band hailing from The Netherlands. The band released three demo’s so far. The third one I’m reviewing here is their latest and is a break from their old sound according to the band.

I’m not familiar with their older material, but the two songs on this demo sound very good. The demo starts of with some guitar distortion, before a short fast spurt kicks in. The music slows down with a acoustic break, soon joined by the vocals, gradually building back up to a fast section. The track keeps switching between slow and fast sections, with some excellent guitar leads. Although the track is pretty straight forward, it is still highly enjoyable due to the nice vocal melody and excellent riffing.

The second track “Stormchaser” is stylistically comparable to the demo starter. Most notable difference is that the drums are quite prominent in this song, giving the track a nice head bopping quality.

The vocals are handled by female vocalist Machteld, who has an decent mid range voice. Next to her clean singing, the band used some sound effect on the both tracks, making the vocals sound like they are slightly distorted by a megaphone. Nice touch.

The production of both songs is very good for a demo recording. The artwork and packaging could use some work, but I guess the band made this demo mainly for promotional use.

While it’s hard to form an opinion on a band based on just two songs, these two tracks impressed me enough to keep an eye on this band.