Strength Power Will Passion

Holy Moses is one of the greats of German thrash, and has in their storied career featured some of the big names in metal, like Danny Lilker (of Anthrax/Nuclear Assault fame), Uli Kusch (Helloween, Masterplan, Gamma Ray) and Atomic Steif (Sodom, Living Death) to name a few. You'd think with a lineage like theirs they couldn't do wrong. They could, however do wrong-ish.

This album features the thrash assault that they are famous for, with some excellent songs like Angel Cry and End of Time (best track on the album to this listener). The major fault here is that amidst the thrashing around, there's not a whole lot of substance to be found.

The musicianship is solid and the production features a lot of crunch, and of course Sabina steals the show with a superbly evil performance. After that, there's really not a whole lot to write home about. The songs tend to drag, and a lot of them are pretty similar to each other.

Beyond these faults, there's really not a lot of replay value here. I listened to it pretty much exclusively for a couple of days, then it was relegated to the shelf where it didn't really get played after (but sporadically, and I would easily tire of it). While it doesn't suck, it's not really great. If you care more about heads down thrash than variance in songwriting, this is a great album. If you're a long time metal fan who has heard it all, there's not really much here to get too excited about.