Review By Jeff Black – 3.5/5 Dragons

https://www.facebook.com/portraitsweden

Satanic Swedes continue to mine the style laid down by Mercyful Fate thirty years ago. Skip straight to track three, right past the acoustic instrumental and “At the Ghost Gate” with it’s black metal open-string riffing. Get into “We Were Not Alone” and “In Time”. You’ll enjoy the first two tracks more if you save ’em for later. Vocalist Per Lengstedt (also of old-school act Overdrive) does his own King Diamond do-si-do with a scream dipped in enough reverb/delay to shroud a corpse. There are loads of riffs that don’t leave room for Jesus, which I like. Perhaps nothing as explosive as “Beast of Fire” or “Bloodbath” from 2011’s Crimen Laesae Majestatis Divinae; I’ll still take Crossroads over the latest offerings from In Solitude or Ram or whatever Ghost is doing. Beware!