Comments
Whitecross
Whitecross
Nineteen Eighty Seven
This album is perhaps the biggest news in Christian metal at the moment. Rex Carroll and Scott Wenzel got back together, along with drummer Michael Feighan and re-recorded this classic Christian metal album. This album was a spark in the fledgling Christian metal scene that had its Stryper, BC, Bloodgood, and a number of West Coast bands, but it was the hard-edged Ratt-like vocals of Wenzel and piercing Lynch-like guitars of Carroll that punched the excitement level in the entire scene up a few notches. The 2005 studio sessions afforded the band to fix the “thin-ness” of the audio spectrum and any other of those nit-picky things that Carroll just had to have fixed. The most immediate difference is a wider, more solid guitar sound. The songs seem to move a little bit slower (losing some of that “urgency”), but dang if those guitar licks don’t sound note-for-note true to the original. The doubled vocals in areas are quite different, and were perhaps un-necessary, but they are few and far between. It’s rough dealing with a classic, but I think Whitecross mostly improved. (“A/B-ing” it with the original makes that point clear.) Adding the cassette/vinyl only single, “Love On The Line,” was a smart and appreciated move. The die-hard fan/collector will now only have one question left: What happened to the ballad, “You’re Mine?” [Girder Music] Doug Van Pelt
This album review was originally published in the Jan/Feb Issue (#117) of HM Magazine. Order the Print Version to read tons more reviews.
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