The Holy Grail of Christian Metal finally gets a legitimate CD reissue for this '84 vinyl only rarity! I just had to steal the description from CD Baby because it describes these releases so damn good. I had never heard of MESSIAH before, as probably a lot of other people, not until I got the offer to review these re-releases, full length "Final Warning" and EP "Going Insane". Just as the holy grail this piece of music has been kept well hidden for ages, some may remember it and some might even have been there when MESSIAH actually was around but for the majority this is as distant as the grail, because this is high quality White Metal.

However, MESSIAH isn't coming cross as overly religious, not through the music at least. I like to create my own impression about the release I'm about to review so I didn't read or look them up until the records has spun a few rounds and it took a little more than halfway through before I even started thinking this was White Metal.

Musically this is a quite obscure journey through time, right between the traditional US Heavy Metal like QUEENSRYCHE or SAVATAGE and the softer A.O.R. Still there's a huge doze of classic Rock and Metal in there too. At first I thought the mixture of the styles was disturbing, that they should have made up their mind and choose one of the two and perhaps then they would have made it. But in the end that was what made it so good, the different feelings and expressions in the music really made the records interesting. Especially on "Final Warning" the different styles in the music really tells a story. I was trying to pin point one specific influence and realized there were much in MESSIAH's music that has resemblances with BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, the really mellow riffs and drifting vocal lines.

These releases from Retroactive Records have been done with love and that's the way it should be. Great music should be made available but there are a lot of cheap shit out there with terrible artwork and extremely cheap print. These releases contain a special message from MESSIAH on the "Final Warning" release and a document for the time around the recording of the "Going Insane" EP. The EP also includes unreleased songs, old demo tracks so there's a really decent doze of music on these releases as well as information.

If it's worth checking out another band that has been put down ages ago? Yep! The songs are good and the recording sounds amazing, even if it's rougher on the demos the sound is still much better than many other real releases today. You don't like White Metal you say? I don't mind religion as long as people keep it to themselves, no matter what it is, and even if there is a Christian message in it all it still isn't pushy. So both "Final Warning" and "Going Insane" is absolutely worth checking out.