Time Signature With heart and honour...

Genre traditional metal

Metal Cross is an obscure Danish metal band from the 1980s. Like so many other bands on the Danish metal scene, thy never got the support they deserved and eventually had to fold after a couple of underground releases. Recently reformed, they released a compilation in November via horror Records which collects their underground releases along with a wealth of live tracks. And this stuff definitely deserves to see the light of day, because it's pretty good.

The first five tracks of disc one are from the 1986 demo "Crucifying the Virgins" and are of varying quality, but mostly leaning towards the 'good-stuff' side. After a blistering downright excellent opening track in the form of 'Metal Cross', the band takes on a more hard rocking style in the Judas Priest-inspired 'Crucifying the Virgins' and 'With Heart and Honour', which are okay songs but also the least strong of that lot. 'Waiting for the Dawn' is an epic horror track which is very well put together and features some near-thrashy aggressive elements, and 'Feed the World' is a solid old authentic old school metal track. The next two originally appeared on a sampler from 1988 entitled "Metal Outlet". 'The Evil Eye' (which apparently is called 'Man with the Eye' on "Metal Outlet") features some epic twin guitar figures, while 'Call for the Children' is more of a dark track which features elements that border on being power-thrash. The net three tracks appeared on a demo from 1988 entitled 'M.A.D.H.O.U.S.E' and continue along the same lines as the previous two tracks, but are slightly more progressively oriented.

The beauty of disc two is that it not only documents live versions of tracks featured on disc one, but also original tracks that have probably not been released previously, such as 'Written in the Sand' and 'Vernal Equinox', all of which are pretty good songs in the same aggressive vein as the last handful of tracks on disc one. The enclosed 7" neatly concludes with a track called 'Insanity' which is similar to 'Metal Cross' except it is not instrumental.

Seeing that we are dealing with demo and live material from the 1980s, do not expect this to be a clinically sterile and perfectly produced album. It has all the authentic flaws that demo artists in the 80s (and the 90s for that matter) had to live with. And you know what, that's what makes this release so charming. It's simply authentic. In terms of the music itself, most of the tracks are very well composed, and the last five tracks on disc one in particular are extremely good combining traditional metal with elements of power-thrash.

Fans of 80s metal should definitely check this release out. And then let's all cross our fingers in the hope that Metal Cross will record a new album (preferably a load of new albums) in the same vein as the material on this compilation.