Category: BARREN CROSS

We featured in exclusive here the BARREN CROSS early albums remastered reissue series, now it has been released their criminally underrated 1994’s ”Rattle Your Cage”, limited to 1000 units and with new cover art.
Released in 1994, this album got sandwiched between the grunge rock and alternative hipsters that thought “metal” was a dirty word. Metal bands were having the life sucked out of them. “Hair band” was a derogatory term, and stars of the LA Strip scene were treated like an embarrassing drunk uncle.
Despite the anti-metal sentiments, Barren Cross defied all odds and put out this epic classic metal / hard rock album on Rugged Records. That label folded and the album went out of print almost as soon as it was released.
While BARREN CROSS ’80s albums were quite commercial hard meets LA glam, ”Rattle Your Cage” has a production and a style much more punchy with the band ripping full-throttle bluesy hard rock reminiscent of BADLANDS, plus a couple of tracks closer to the anthemic AOR of their origins…
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At the late ’80s, BARREN CROSS entered in conflict with Enigma Records, and they had to fulfill an album contract so both parts agreed to re-release the band’s first album, 1986’s ”Rock For The King”.
But it was 1990 and the hard rock / metal sound significantly changed at the time with the original ”Rock For The King” resulting pretty heavy overall.
So Enigma asked renowned Ronnie Montrose to re-mix & re-master the original tapes. The result is quite amazing, as the 1986 songs sound completely different, with a melodic hard rock feel.
The reissue also featured a more ‘friendly’ band logo, and the fun “oh-my-gosh-blue-&-white-mid-Eighties-hair-metal-time-warp-outfits” photo on the cover was replaced by Barren Cross current mainstream-rock look / band photo in jeans n’ boots.
It’s almost a different album, and a great example of how a mixing can completely change an album – for better or worse. I really dig this ‘melodic hard rock’ 90s version of ”Rock For The King”. As extras, there’s some live cuts as bonus.

And to complete some essential BARREN CROSS, here’s the band’s first full length album, 1986‘s “Rock For The King“, in its remastered edition managed by the band themselves and housed into a digipak case.
“Rock For The King” set the stage for many great releases by the band however none of them carried the collect-ability, energy and drive quite like this one. So much that it caught the eye of Enigma Records (Stryper) record label back in 1985.
Produced by Dino Elefante, “Rock For The King” showcases BARREN CROSS early influences from classic bands like Judas Priest or the first Queensryche. The music is melodic yet heavy and contains some killer hooks…

As any artists who has turned out a career-defining work can tell you, watershed projects, for all of the accolades and opportunities they provide, often create unreasonable expectations for whatever happens to follow in their wake.
Such was certainly the case for the LA-based white metal quartet, BARREN CROSS, whose tour de force ‘Atomic Arena’ album did serious business on the mainstream hard rock airplay charts, spawned a heavily-rotated MTV video single, and eventually went on to be named one of the top 20 Christian metal albums of all time by the folks at Heaven’s Metal magazine.
To say that the record set an imposing high-water mark for the group’s next undertaking would be an understatement.
So ‘if ain’t broken, don’t fix it’, and Barren Cross next album 1989’s ”State Of Control” sounds almost exactly like its predecessor, just more ‘melodic’ according the year, with the Elefante bros providing that polished production sound. This fresh remastered version include two bonus tracks.
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Nearing the end of relentlessly touring the ‘Atomic Arena’ album, and having only two releases under the band’s belt, BARREN CROSS pulled into the International Ballroom in Pico Rivera, CA to record this live release. For many, at the time Barren Cross was in its finest moment, and ”Hotter Than Hell! Live” only confirmed that conviction.
Studio albums are supposed to be produced, calculated, and pristine. Live albums are supposed to let the band breathe and let the musician’s talent and expertise shine though with no filters. That’s exactly what happens with ”Hotter Than Hell! Live”: a raw, no overdubs live recording published in 1990 (but recorded 1989).
There’s a doubt if a live recording can be remastered, in the case of “Hotter Than Hell!” the output is more balanced and vibrant than the original CD release.
Only at 0dayrox

Limited to 1000 units, here’s in exclusive the fresh, first time remastered version of US rockers BARREN CROSS 1988’s album “Atomic Arena“.
By the time ”Atomic Arena” was released, the hard rock audience had already been whipped into a feeding frenzy with the song ‘Deadlock’ being included on the massively popular California Metal Compilation.
Fans were demanding more, and it’s hard to believe Barren Cross could have delivered a more perfect album than ”Atomic Arena”. Most noticeably, mature songwriting with topics presented in a skilled manner.
Produced by John & Dino Elefante with a pristine sound and signed to Enigma Records, Barren Cross were label-mates with Ratt, Poison & Stryper and MTV’s embrace of the album’s opener, ‘Imaginary Music’, showed that’s exactly where they belonged.