Band : Cross X

Album title : Question Authority...

Label : Private

Distributor : Private

Release date : March 2008

Release : Enhanced CD

The beginings of this South-German act can be traced back to the Autumn of 1997, when bassist Andreas " Steini " Steinbauer (formerly with Sick Of Society and The Shit ) and singer/ guitarist Andreas Rohrer started jamming together. Soon after they were joined by a first drummer, but he quit after just a few months, and it would take until one year after the first jams before a copletion of the line-up would be found with skinsman Oliver Kast (ex- Sick Of Society , but also formerly with Die Kasebleichen Trauben and Wicked Power).

In preparation for upcoming live shows, the band then focused on their songwriting, making their stage debut in April 1999. That first show was to be followed with a run of gigs in the Ulm region supporting the likes of Silvermachine , Ockmonex , Stofzuiger , and others. Towards the end of 2000 the trio felt they had the necessary material to fill their first CD, so they recorded a total of 14 songs under promotional direction of Stefan Drescher of F-Rage . February of 2001 then not only saw the release of demo-CD Negative Worlds , but also the on-line activation of the band's website crossx.de. With new activities on the live front (and let's not exagerate about the quantity they actually did), and continued song-writing, mounting tensions between Rohrer (whom was the main contributor in the writing process) and the two others lead to his departure due to the usual "musical differences" in April 2002.

Only a week later the remaining duo had found a replacement on the guitar with Georg Schröter , and after several auditions in the Autumn of the same year, they also recruited new singer Nico Fetter (formerly of F-Rage ). Following some rehearsals, the band ended the year with a Christmas gig...following that up with their busiest year on the live front (including some appearances on smaller festivals) up to that date. Right after the recording of an un-official 4-track promo towards the end of the year, the guitarist decided to take a small break, a pauze which would turn out to become permanent only months later...again leaving the band without axeman! His swift replacement would be Metabloc guitarist Falko Trischler . The renewed line-up played their first gigs as soon as possible in early 2004, and went into the studio in the Summer to record the 5 songs on their January 2005 released demo-CD Emolution.

Even before reading the reactions to that demo, I'd been listening to the band's latest offering, and a weird sensation of "something's wrong here" bafell me. Apparently, reviewers of that old demo were kinda synonymous in their feelings that the band needed to steer away from their specific forced mixing of Hardcore and Metal sub-styles. Some Hardcore here, some Thrash there, some Emo elsewhere...then a bit of Nu-Metal. On top you get a total of three singers (the frontman, the guitarist, and the bassist) with clearly different singing styles. One's more the "Spoken Work" kinda "singer", the other is a definite Hardcore screamer, and the third fills in the somewhat silly (and luckily rather sparce) higher squeals. Although there's a couple of songs on which the combination works, the fact that the boys persevere somehow comes out all wrong in the end. I'm afraid one thing most of those reviewers (mentioned above) will agree with, is that the band still needs to make definitive directional choice!

But...don't believe me at face value, check things out by yourself after all, you may very well into the band's seemingly awkward mixing of styles) by surfing to the media section on the band's website, where you'll find several mp3-files for songs off the new promo-CD (either in their final version, or in a version off a 2006 demo the band did preceeding the recordings of the album). If you would find out Cross X 's music is something for you after all, you may find it interesting to find out that the Question Authority CD comes with a comprehensive multi-media section containing not only the usual informational section, but also a total of 5 videos (one for 2004's "Paranoid" , the rest for songs off the new album), a picture gallery, the lyrics, and a "Making Of" story/ pictures...and no video, as indicated...you'll have to find that under the "extras" section (in the form of a short interview video), where you'll also find a "Karaoke" version of their 2004 song "Paranoid" , as well as a re-worked biography of the band in comemoration of the band's 10 th anniversary in 2007, and some 22 flyers of gigs the band was at in the last couple of years.

74/100

Tony.