Southern Music is full of life and passion throughout its history, which creates its pure passion to the ones who are drawn to it... so has Heavy Metal.  When you let these powerhouse musical forces come together into one driving and pounding unit... it is pure heaven to the ears and hearts of all.  This basically describes this North Carolina based metal outfit called THE SIGN OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS.

As strange as it sounds... The Sign of the Southern Cross sounds like if your combined the musical powers of BLACK LABEL SOCIETY, the strength and heaviness of BLACK SABBATH and the legendary coolness of LYNYRD SKYNYRD and then add in a whole shit load of attitude into it all.  It is a concoction that is so amazingly brutal, titanically heavy and oh-so incredibly addicting... that I have already listened to the EP many times already.  It has become that guilty little pleasure you allow yourself to indulge in on many occasions.

All three songs on this EP are like that, but it left me needing... no... craving for way more.  As brilliant as this music is, the rating I am giving is reflective of the fact that they only give us three tracks. If this was a full album that they had put pout, and every song was this sort of quality... this would be a 10+ in my book.  Right now, I guess I need to give a lower rating, and hope that they put out an album really soon.

THE SIGN OF THE SOUTHERN CROSS is a band that needs to be heard a whole lot more... metalheads all over the world need to near them.  I am just one lucky slob who has the pleasure and the means to do just that... I love being a reviewer, especially when I get albums like this to do.

The album, released by Season Of Mist, can be downloaded free of charge from the label's website.