It was in the early Seventies that Larry Norman posed the question, “Why should the devil have all the good music?” and over the years the same stance has been taken by many musicians with different degrees of success. The most famous Christian musician in the UK is undoubtedly Cliff Richard, but the vast majority of his success has been with secular material. However, there was a time when White Metal started to make some impression, with the most successful of these probably being Stryper, especially with their ‘Soldiers Under Command’ and ‘To Hell With The Devil’ albums. But, as with many subgenres within the Metal scene, WM refused to go away even if people weren’t writing about it. The man behind this album is Johannes Jonsson who has written the liner notes in the booklet, and also chosen each and every song. Johannes runs the Metal Community in Sweden who is a driving force for Christian Metal in Scandinavia. The bands featured are all Swedish, Narnia, Divinefire, Golden Resurrection, Audiovision and Modest Attraction. The label says, “Enjoy the metal power with a heavenly message!”
And there you have what for me is the main issue at hand. If you are Christian and you enjoy melodic metal then you will buy this and no doubt think that it is truly wonderful. If you are not Christian, then there isn’t enough in pure musical terms to outweigh the sermonising that takes place in some of these numbers. It’s a pleasant enough album (although the song from Modest Attraction makes me glad that they only band to just have one as it is rather basic AC/DC), but not good enough to recommend it if you’re not already a believer.
