Halford United Kingdom

"I remember buying this album in a record shop in a small town in the eastern parts of Southern Jutland. I wasn't sure whether to purchase it or not, but being a Priest fan (and because it was ridiculously cheap), I decided in favor of "Crucible" by Halford. The cashier's horrified gasp when he saw the homoerotic image of Rob Halford sitting on a throne, clad in a studded Blue Oyster Bar style leather outfit and carrying a whip insured me that this would be a good investment.

And it was.

"Crucible" is a mostly solid heavy metal album which, while planted firmly in traditional heavy metal, also borrows from thrash metal, power metal and groove metal. Most of the songs contain hard hitting metal riffs of various types and excellent drumming by Scott Travis. Yup, this is an all out metal album, musically, but, of course, the main attraction is Halford's versatile voice, which offers both insane screaming, melodic semi-operatic singing, raw rock 'n' roll vocals and all the other things he is capable of doing. I think that the album starts out very strong with a lot of hard rocking thrashy, groovy, and power-metall-ish elements, but towards the end, it is as if the energy peters out a bit.

In any case, "Crucible" is a fine metal album and a punch in the gut of those bigots who claim that homosexuals cannot be rockers!

I'd recommend this to fans of traditional heavy metal and power metal as well as melodic thrash metal. Judas Priest fans will probably also like it. Also, the experience itself of scaring the cr*p out of your local homophobic record store cashier is worth it.

(review originally posted on metalmusicarchives.com)"