BRIDGE TO THE PROMISED LAND

I was actually confused by the line up of songs for this demo/album. It appears it's the list of songs from their previous album so that explains. Anyway I appear to have one of the 500 copies by Cyclops, that's always nice although nowadays people have lots of ways to copy and distribute music so what's it worth ?

Three of the songs on this 6 song demo have already been released on the first two albums and those are Childscream, Unspoken whisper and Bridge to the promised land. The other three appear to be demotracks from around 1994 and then we are talking about Corrugated road, Running on empty and Suicide which is my favourite track of the 6 by the way despite the sinister title.

In fact I don't have to much to say about this album because the tracks are not easy to discuss and define. If I take my usual reviewing marks (vocals, instrumental aspect and compositions) I'd say the vocals are not my favourite (fortunately Margriet Boomsma is the lead singer since this century), the instrumental handling is a lot better and the compositions are good but not mindblowing. The only other important aspect is resemblances to other progbands and only Final Conflict and Saga (Unspoken Whisper !) come to mind but that's only slight resemblance. So instead reviewing it thoroughly myself I will tell something about the background of this release. In the booklet I read this material is from 1994 (like I said) and it got them going apparently because it also says Cyclops discovered them thanks to the demo and offered them a contract. They admit themselves that the sound quality is mediocre (true) but that was because it was not meant to be released in the first place. It was 6 or 7 years later that they decided to do that anyway. Nevertheless they got great response out of it and were even awarded in 1998 as best new band (CRS) after the release of their first real album but indirectly it was all thanks to this demo so that proves the value of first careful steps in music. Flamborough Head were even invited abroad to do gigs it appears so that must have been very satisfying. To conclude it was after their second successful album they decided together with cyclops to release an album of the demo because of increasing demands for it. (I recognize this, if you like a band a lot you always want to know how they actually started and if there was already something there before the first real album).

I have no other albums of Flamborough Head (yet), the only other track I know was the one of Cyclops sampler no.5 (Limestone Rock) and I really like that one so I will check out more. This one is their real beginning, an album with ups and downs, not bad at all but also not groundbreaking either.