"Breakout" is the debut major album from Austrian metal outfit, CROSSING EDGE. The group has a definite focus on making use of polished production and modern technology, while keeping the music melodic and riff heavy, with plenty of shreddy lead breaks and a mixture of clean vocals and shouts.

The 12 tracks represented here all have a lot of energy and a lot of emotionally charged content, which is highlighted by the stop and start grooves of the riffs. The solo and chorus of "Into the Sun" are particularly memorable as melodic and shred standouts on the album. While it is refreshing to hear a metal album where the vocals are sung rather than 100% screamed, shouted or growled; the tone of the singer's voice in CROSSING EDGE does grind on the ears somewhat, and sounds like a large number of other melodic metal groups where vocals are mixed between shouts and singing.

The bass breaks and solos within "The Prophet's Choice" offer a different kind of texture, and the rhythmic, heavily palm-muted guitar chugs, coupled with drum blast beats suggests a passing influence coming from the "Djent" movement. However, this is a passing thing, with the main genre label that CROSSING EDGE fit into is the more mainstream end of the Melodic Metal/Metalcore spectrum.

"Testify" opens with a nice, harmonised dual guitar riff before heading into a tight, rhythmic verse, coupled with a repetitive lead line. One thing that all the songs have is a catchiness, which is paired with very tight rhythmic playing; giving the tracks a very strong groove.

"Breakout" is far from an original or ground breaking album, and CROSSING EDGE sonically and visually fit into the mainstream of their genre of melodic, modern metal. However the songs are all well crafted, and do contain some moments of tasty playing.<