Iron Cross - s/t (1986)

Metal will always have a bright future, but it's the past that intrigues me far more. With today's technological wizardry anything can be achieved with sound and image, and yet when you hear a band like Iron Cross, you can see why metal was so influential in the '80s, and yet also feared. This is a stuffy, devilishly obscure heavy metal offering from a Finnish band who were all too keen to get the denim jackets on and start fires in the bedroom. These are the sort of albums that make metal history and folklore so rich, because these hellish records coem from the heart and soul - there are no gimmicks here, and sure, the production is hazy, but if I'd picked this up in 1986 I'd have been in my element. This is metal through and through, from the song titles to the music contained - cavernous, gloomy noise that'll have you reaching for the black candles. "Demons in my sleep..." screams the vocalist, as a creeping, ominous chord rings out, painting pictures of sinister engulfing shadows and cold cavern walls. "Demons everywhere..." he adds, keen to thicken the already chokinga tmosphere. It's low budget rocky horror metal that creates atmosphere, leads you in, then rocks your balls off - prime example being 'Fantasy World' which doesn't kick in until 2:30 but when it does it's a molten crotch grabber, as is another slow builder, the doomy 'Demons' whilst 'Dark Dreams' is more upbeat. I was always happy to spend hours listening to the cold steel assault of Judas Priest, but for me metal was always about the imagery, the dark Satanic hints and the twisted noise of a track like 'Mistress Of The Dark/Bloodlust' with its echoes and growls. Iron Cross are metal, the name says it all, but be warned, this is real '80s metal, not some overdubbed, overproduced modern machine. 7/10