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Place Your Bets

      
         
         
         
     
             
Holy Cross are a heavy metal band from France, formed in 2006 and play a combination of thrash and power metal.    
             
'Place Your Bets' is the second album by Holy Cross and opens in sparkling style with 'Bad Day (In The Best Of Worlds', a rampaging foot stomping song, great riffs and thunderous drums with vocals a mix of growl and throaty rasp. Title song 'Place Your Bets' offers more of the same but is more thrash in its delivery. 'Last Chance' is pure hard rock as it rumbles along with some great guitar work and blistering solos.    
             
'Break Your Chains' is an up tempo power metal song with some thunderous drums and a much cleaner vocal performance than the previous songs. 'Realm Of Madness' is a crushing brutal song, very heavy musically yet retaining the clean vocals heard on 'Break Your Chains'. A huge power metal riff welcomes 'From Past To Dust' as it gallops on at pace with the vocals changing from clean to growl.    
             
A short slow acoustic intro belies the heaviness that is 'Inner Jail'. Pantera like in its chugging rhythm with powerful vocals that range from almost growl like to the Rob Halford (Judas Priest) style scream. 'Unleash The Cross' is a thunderous example of mixing power metal with speed metal and high pitched screaming vocals. Final song on the album is a huge musical departure from what has gone before. 'Higher & Higher' is more rock and roll than metal, with a rhythm more at home in the southern rock genre, with a vocal performance that is hard to believe is the same singer heard on the previous songs.    
             
Overall, thunderous chugging rhythms and a wide range of vocal performances, there is something here for fans of the thrash, speed and power metal genres.    
             
             
Review by Iron Mathew Collins    
             
Reviewed for Metal Temple    
             
             
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