Band : Roxxcalibur
Album title : NWOBHM For Muthas
Label : Limb Music Productions
Distributor : Suburban – Bertus – Hard Life Promotion
Released on : 24/04/2009
Release : CD

What better way to celebrate 30 years of NWOBHM than forming a tribute group, gaining a record deal, and bringing out a CD.
For this album members of German metal bands Viron and Abandoned joined efforts.  The band Roxxcalibur was formed in spring 2007 as an NWOBHM tribute band.
In Autumn 2008 the quintett  were signet by Limb Muaic Products, and began working on their first CD titled NWOBHM for Muthas.
What strikes is that these lads have not opted to play it safe, I mean they could easily have restricted themselves to the better nown bands of that period, but instead of that they selected a lot of songs from lesser known bands, or even what you might call underground jewels - bands like Bleak House, Radium, Trident etc. who were denied the great breakthrough because their songs were only published as singles.  I must admit there are even some bands I had never heard of.
Musicwise this CD mirrors the many facets of NWOBHM.  From hard rock ("Lady of Mars") to classical metal ("Destiny") going to what you might call pre-speed metal ("Running for the line") to the epic "War of the ring" and the progressively arranged "The Gates of Gehenna".
Of course, knowing most of the original versions, you could say "what's new", because the songs arrangements were not changed, and the recording was done to stay as close as possible to the original, so Pro Tools editing, triggered drums etc. were not used, but nevertheless theu tried to achieve a great "2009" sound production.  I dare say they did a very good effort.
Alexx Stahl, the singer (Viron, Child in Time) is a very good singer.  And, unlike Klaus Meine - I'm going to thread one some toes here - his English is pretty good.  Of course you cannot expect that he equals the original singers, but I don't think there's any singer with that broad a spectrum, unless maybe Freddie Mercury, but then you're talking about another genre altogether.
The artwork was done by Rodney Matthews, known for his work with bands like Diamond Head, Praying Mantis but even for megabands like Magnum and the Scorpions.
Roxxcalibur will be appearing at the Keep It True Festival in Germany (24 & 25 april) and will be joined by several special guests.

92/100

Erik Morre.