Battlecross - Pursuit Of Honor

(CD, Metal Blade, 2011)

Before I begin with this review, let me first of all say that sometimes those surprises - that is when you expected something and something else pops up - are what I like most in our music. This happened with BATTLECROSS and their second full-length album, “Pursuit Of Honor”. The promo sheet from their record label was characterizing them as Heavy Metal. On other web places around the net people were saying about Thrash / Death Metal, the old school way. And the story goes on and on... So I was like, “Wow, let’s do this!” and I hit the ‘play’ button. And here is where it begun.

What I got was NOTHING (and I mean almost nothing!) to what you may imagine from what was said above. Even though the name of the band, the logo and the title of their album was all about the things mentioned above, their music was different. And it was damn freakin’ good actually! Despite the fact that I hate labels and genres, mostly because sometimes they create borders for a metalhead in order to listen to a band, I would characterize BATTLECROSS as melodic Death / Thrash Metal band. You know, the ‘usual’ stuff: fast guitars, nice melodies, breakdowns, growls (a GREAT vocalist here!) etc. What this band does (however may not win the prize for something ground breaking), is an excellent job. Listening to the album again and again, it brought many bands to my mind that would be pointless to start mentioning them. However, you can more or less imagine some bands when I tell you that both the modern US and Swedish scene have possibly influenced them.

Moreover BATTLECROSS do not stay in between the borders of the above genre. You will find a lot of interesting things for your ears on this one folks. What I liked most though is that they have managed to be technical yet melodic, fast yet not boring without making you loose interest during the entire album.

Making a long story short truth is that from what I have listened to from their previous album, they have evolved. They have created somehow their own sound and they do their best; that is one sure thing! Let’s see what the future holds for these guys...

7/10

Links:

www.BattlecrossMetal.Com
www.MySpace.Com/Battlecross
www.FaceBook.Com/BattlecrossMetal

Tracklist:

01. Pursuit Of Honor
02. Push Pull Destroy
03. Kaleb
04. Deception
05. Man Of Stone
06. Breaking You
07. Rupture
08. Leech
09. Better Off Dead
10. Misery
11. Foreshadowing

Lineup:

Kyle “Gumby” Gunther - Vocals
Don Slater - Bass
Mike Kreger - Drums
Hiran Deraniyagale - Guitar
Tony Asta - Guitar

Written by Manolis Alfieris Sunday, 24 July 2011 19:58