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Requested by Khiijol, here's BLACK CROSS (from Portugal) Demo "Sexta Feira 13" :

http://rapidshare.com/files/71384688/BL ... ira_13.zip

great stuff, thanks again!

nice and obscure, rough and primitive with lots of tape hiss. What more can you want to evoke the old days of tape trading?

I think it's rubbish. Makes Hellhammer's "Hammerhead" sound like "Queen of the Reich". Pretty good guitar leads tho'.

Almost so bad it's funny
Thanx!

I'm surprised that you guys like this...
For me this is 1 of the worst bands ever in my country...this band wasn't supposed to be taken seriously...

The guitar player was good.

good ?
it's like saying they were good doing tv advertisements...

Well, they were, from what I remember the anti-drug one was hilarious. And the guitar player was good. But they didn't keep up with each other, it was like each guy was playing to himself. Of course, by today's standards the band didn't play shit, but one must see the context. We're speaking Portugal around 1986. Recording a demo was nearly impossible. Many bands of the time have left nothing recorded.

I wish I had seen them live back then. I heard great stories, like the vocalist eating raw meat on stage, and being so drunk he was singing with the microphone in one hand and a paper with the lyrics handwritten on the other, and once him busting his knee because he stagedived with all the spikes and stuff and everybody got out of the way and he went straight to the floor.

Well,Rick...believe me...this band really sucked even in the mid-80's standards...i was there and i knew the guys specially the vox(i dont remember now his name and i wont bother to search it in m.a.)...
ALL bands in mid-80's left audio stuff recorded: Satan Saints,Sts Paranoid,Valium,Sepulcro,Tarantula,V-12,Procyon,Iberia,The Coven,Alkateya...
And when we talk about live shows if you could been there you should have seen the Rock Rendez Vouz Soirees...Tarantula using 2 guitar players and lots of smoke in their speed metal era(lots of symilarities with early ADX or early Mercyful Fate)...The V-12 show was always Killer set has you can check it through the you tube links...or if you attended the 1st Portuguese Heavy Metal Festival in Sto Ant dos Cavaleiros you could have seen the "birth of the baby"...of course nothing of this really matters now...it's only part of history...
For me, Black Cross was only 4 dudes with long hair dressed in black but without enough talent to be refered as thrash or black portugal pioneers...

The vocalist was called 'Destruction' Subtil.
You must be a few years older than I am. Unfortunately I missed most of the 80s portuguese underground scene. I only started going to gigs in 1989.
Granted, Black Cross were far, far inferior to bands such as Sepulcro or V12, that is obvious. But it wasn't that easy to record a demo back then, and several good or great bands never recorded anything. The first that spring to my mind are Mortifera and Massive Roar, but many others didn't. Remember that live LP with the Rock Rendez-Vous recordings that ended up never being released? There alone you have three further examples of bands that left no legacy, namely Navan, Blizzard and Devil Across (arguably the latter had a rehearsal or demo, but I never heard it or seen it anywhere).
My point is that it was very difficult for a band of teenagers (as every Metal band around here was at the time) to get the money to record a demo in a proper studio, and even then the sound quality was still a very far cry from professional productions from abroad.
Black Cross did lack in musical quality, but they had shock value.

I wish I knew whether the RRV recordings still exist. It would be beautiful to release them now, more than 20 years later. I know at least one label that surely would.

Well i can see i'm "talking" here with someone who knows about it...
I know who has the RRV recordings but i lost his contact many years ago...
(Rui da Pontinha)...I know he was in the Priest Feast but i didnt go there...
I also tried another dude who maybe(?) has them but never opens his mouth about it( Chico-the Dawnrider vox...)...
so i quited looking for that...
Rui da Pontinha also has live recs of Sts Paranoid/Valium/Satan Saints in various gigs in Amadora for sure...(some of them i think they were recorded in Vhs...)...
Devil Across i would like to have their tape too because i saw them live once and they were a young dudes band that deserved respect...
In the same musical style of Black Cross i think Matron was much better...
But now i forgot all those names and bands...1 thing is for sure: THOSE WERE THE DAYS (in terms of portuguese HM)...
the scene now sucks and its almost all trends...

I was in touch with a guy some years ago that actually had the signed contracts for the edition of the LP. I sent him an e-mail a short time ago but to no avail. I'll keep on trying to track those recordings down. It will be a shame if such an important piece of portuguese Metal history just fades into oblivion.
Mantron was later than Black Cross I think, and another band that never recorded anything. I saw them live together with Massive Roar and the portuguese Massacre back in '89.

Those were the days indeed! The scene is totally different now. Still, a few bands are still worth supporting around here in my opinion, such as Gargula and Midnight Priest.

Are you Rick Thor of Ironsword ?

Yup.