{"id":119377,"date":"2025-11-03T13:19:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/119377\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T13:19:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T13:19:11","slug":"bastard-cross-crossripper-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/119377\/","title":{"rendered":"Bastard Cr\u00f6ss – Crossripper Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"As a massive fan of anything that creeps, crawls, horrifies, or shocks, I enjoy no season more than Halloween. And since October 31st falls on a release day to steel-toed-boot this year, and with me closing in on my first 365-day stint as a staffer at AMG no less, I was especially eager to recover something particularly apropos from the promo pit. Enter Philly\u2019s fresh and ferocious foursome, Bastard Cr\u00f6ss, and their Morbid and Miserable Records debut album, Crossripper. Formed in 2021, with a couple of EPs and splits tucked under their bulleted belts, Bastard Cr\u00f6ss come correct from the crypts of Philadelphia to regale us all with crude, blackened-thrash tales \u2018inspired by horror movies\u2019 and \u2018notably dark and violent documented events from religious history.\u2019 Sounds like a recipe for tons o\u2019 fetid fun as this most horrible of holidays draws nigh. Does Bastard Cr\u00f6ss have what it takes to toll Samhain\u2019s bell, though, or are they just one more razor-blade-filled treat meant to trick us?<\/p>\n

Bastard Cr\u00f6ss play Neanderthalic, throwb(l)ack thrash, and it\u2019s clear they poured every ounce of their blood, sweat, and beers into Crossripper as it sounds like a long-lost 1985 album that would\u2019ve had tape traders salivating back in the day. Forged in fires from an age when Slayer were still Showing No Mercy and Bathory had yet to quaff a drop of Blood Fire or Death, and with a pinch or two of punk attitude ala early Mot\u00f6rhead and Anti-Cimex thrown in as well, Crossripper is robustious and raw. Album opener \u201cParasitic\u201d sets the table by delivering all the Bastard Cr\u00f6ss goods. Infernal Bastard\u2019s pulse-quickening drum intro gives way to Beheader of Priests\u2019 heaving bass and the satisfyingly speedy, dual guitar mayhem of Blasphemous Axe and Heathen Chevalier, who also share vocal duties. Their approach runs the gamut from Quorthonic croaks and Tom Araya-like wails to everyman gutturals that would complement any would-be death outfit to a tee. Adrift in the sea of metal\u2019s retro movement\u2014more modern comparisons to Nocturnal or Deathhammer are apt\u2014Bastard Cr\u00f6ss stand out by injecting perfect amounts of mayhem and melody into Crossripper\u2019s well-written, tightly executed songs.<\/p>\n

Crossripper by Bastard Cr\u00f6ss<\/a><\/p>\n

Bastard Cr\u00f6ss are nothing if not all-out balls-to-the-wall, horns-held-high fun. Memorable moments abound throughout Crossripper\u2019s easily digestible thirty-seven-minute runtime. Whether plodding forth in Morbid Tales-like fashion before death galloping along (\u201cCrossripper\u201d) or wammy diving your ears into liquified submission (\u201cLycan Knights\u201d), by the time the beer-can popping sound byte accentuates the punk-in-cheek attitude swarming the start of \u201cSatanic Pandemonium,\u201d you should be thrash-stomping your drunk ass all over the living room and smashing empty PBR cans against your forehead. Bastard Cr\u00f6ss even manage to squeeze in an admirable homage to 80s hair-metal cock rock in the form of \u201cDemons at Midnight,\u201d a song possessed by sleazy riffage and another one of Crossripper\u2019s many catchy-as-hell choruses. I even looked forward to the beautifully executed, acoustically driven outro to the excellent album closer \u201cBehead the Priest,\u201d which features some angelic, cherry-on-top vocal emanations from Marisa Monaco.<\/p>\n

\"\"
Everything about Crossripper oozes speed-laced, devil-metal nostalgia. From the primitive, yet perfectly rendered, Sandy Rezalmi cover art to the cheeky, we-mean-business band aesthetic and appropriately raw, period-style production, Bastard Cr\u00f6ss nail so many things on Crossripper, I\u2019m left with little to complain about. In fact, I can\u2019t look back on any part of my time with Crossripper and say I didn\u2019t enjoy it. I suppose my lone critique would be that if Bastard Cr\u00f6ss continue swimming in the pool of retro-80s speed-blackened thrash metal, it might be a bridge too far for them to cross and achieve any level of innovative greatness. Not that this is a death sentence by any means. Should Bastard Cr\u00f6ss continue to put out this level of quality horror-loving retro metal, they\u2019re poised to enjoy a pretty solid career.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not the biggest fan of the phrase \u2018mileage may vary,\u2019 but I feel it\u2019s appropriate when it comes to summarizing the Bastard Cr\u00f6ss experience. Crossripper doesn\u2019t do anything you haven\u2019t probably heard before. But what it does do is pretty damn good. In this digital age, when there\u2019s more music at your fingertips than at any other moment in history, it\u2019s assessing what music warrants your time and, in some cases, hard-earned cash that has become the commodity by which reviewers provide the most value. And I can assure you, spending thirty-seven minutes with Bastard Cr\u00f6ss and Crossripper this Halloween is definitely worth yours.<\/p>\n

Rating: 3.5\/5.0
DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Morbid and Miserable Records<\/a>
Websites: Bandcamp<\/a> | Facebook<\/a>
Releases Worldwide: October 31st, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a massive fan of anything that creeps, crawls, horrifies, or shocks, I enjoy no season more than…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":119378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5808,32260,14120,71407,71408,71409,28492,71410,93,61,60,36739,71411,278,37128,563,71412,69074,32269],"class_list":{"0":"post-119377","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-5808","9":"tag-3-5","10":"tag-american-metal","11":"tag-anti-cimex","12":"tag-bastard-cross","13":"tag-bathory","14":"tag-black-metal","15":"tag-crossripper","16":"tag-entertainment","17":"tag-ie","18":"tag-ireland","19":"tag-morbid-and-miserable-records","20":"tag-motorhead","21":"tag-music","22":"tag-oct25","23":"tag-review","24":"tag-slayer","25":"tag-speed-metal","26":"tag-thrash-metal"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=119377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/119378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=119377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=119377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=119377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}