It’s been, quite literally, a lifetime since the last Witch Cross album. Back in 1984 metal was just metal and you wore long hair, jeans (most likely blue, I’m afraid), trainers and it was all about vinyl or maybe a tape if you were feeling progressive and didn’t mind risking it getting chewed up in your mate’s crap ‘portable’ tape recorder (usually the size, shape and weight of half a breeze block that required a year’s pocket money for batteries which ran out in three hours). Got the picture? This was the old days, my friends. But it was also exciting times and the reason was that bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and a gang of followers like Witch Cross were taking the scene by storm with a ton of speedy, riff-laden, guitar soloing and high pitched screaming that was such a good formula bands across the world still adore it to this day.
Witch Cross were there, or most of them were anyway, and ripping things up with Fit For Fight a kick ass slab of above average hard rock meets the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal. They are remembered these days for being one of only a handful of Danish bands from the time that came even close to making it and for their associations, via their production crew, with Danish metal legends Mercyful Fate. Since then the album has benefitted from at least three re-releases and an increasingly nostalgic fan base. Reviewed on this very site nine months ago by yours truly, Fit For Fight epitomises the sound of the time wonderfully – part rock, part NWOBHM, part glam, part speed metal. This band is the real deal. So here they are now with a new career, new album, almost three years per song since 1984 to come up with this, their second release. No pressure then guys.
What is the most remarkable thing about Axe To Grind is that it could, without doubt, have been the follow-up to the debut. The first album had all the charm, vigour and flimsy production that befits a young band starting out three decades ago. This, impressively, still has the punch but with a more solid dimension to the guitars and production that lends a bit more weight to songs like speed metal anthem Riding With The Wind and fists in the air Metal Nation. Unlike a lot of careers that have resurfaced in the past couple of years this genuinely sounds like the work of a band not just from the 1980s – but in the 1980s. Barely a note out of place betraying a hint they have absorbed any influences after December 31 1987. The mix of heavy LA rock (Demon in the Mirror), NWOBHM (Axe To Grind – an instrumental and a top pick from the album) and even pushing into thrashy territory as thrash bands began to emerge and take metal into new extremes (the chorus of final track Chelsea 100). Axe To Grind leans more in this direction and that almost as if caught at that cross roads between heavy rock chart success and something a little, well, heavier.
In the end its a little more Saxon rather than Maiden – right down to new vocalist Kevin Moore comparisons I’ve seen with Bill Byford. The comparison seems all the fairer given Moore’s links to Saxon’s shadow band (weirdly just called Oliver Dawson Saxon) set up by its former members Graham Oliver and Steve Dawson. With the heavier rock influence comes the chugging riffs that get a little laboured on tracks like Awakening-Pandora’s Box. But its a sincere attempt at producing an album that, while never quite blowing me away, can still boast to be filler-free for the most part and as good as pulls on the spandex and blinds you with the lighting rig as it head bangs along. Almost as if they had been there and come back to tell us all about it.
(7/10 Reverend Darkstanley)
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