Rock For The King - Barren Cross (1986)

Quality or nostalgia: was younger me onto something, or just on something?

As I’ve said, Christan rock was my way into the world of pop music, and Christian metal was similarly my way into metalhead culture. There was a lot of occasionally good but mostly terrible metal in the world of the mid-80s, so preictably there was also a large supply of occasionally good but mostly terrible Christ-themed metal: Stryper were the obvious big fish in this space, with actual commercial cred and airplay, but there were also Messiah Prophet, Bride, and these guys.

Barren Cross, at least on this first album, position themselves as something between Iron Maiden and Dio that you can play while your parents are in the house.

The themes are nothing that gospel-themed rock hasn’t been doing for decades (or proselytism in general for millenia): How badass it is that your sins are forgiven, and how frightful the alternative is. It’s a limited view of the great mystery, as I think of it currently, but it was right in line with how I was raised.

So is it Quality or Nostalgia?

I mean… it’s not bad. I was a bit surprised how much of the record I remembered when I heard it, even though I probably haven’t listened to it since 1988. A testament to the songcraft here.

The title track is about the most literal ripoff of Holy Diver you’ll ever hear, but there are some pretty decent tracks. It’s all time-locked into the leather-and-spandex-and-hairspray vocabulary of mid-80s metal, but it works ok.