To many, the scattered remnants of Czech extreme metal scene from the late 80"s/early 90"s are like some ancient Egypt"s hieroglyphs: they know how valuable and unique they are but they don"t know what start nor have they the correct knowledge to fully apprehend them. Adding to the confusion is the misconception that since most of those cheap recordings were performed by wild, young but inexperienced metalheads, the result would be as restless as clumsy, far removed from the pristine productions values and tight musicianship of the dominating Floridian death-metal scene for instance. But the beauty of Crux is that as obscure (only two demos) and short-lived (less than three years) as this Ostrava black/thrash outfit was, almost two decades later, their first recording still rips to pieces those assumptions, then light up a bonfire with its remains and dance around it screaming like a maniac.
Roman Kribek (bass) and Petr "Blackie" Hosek (guitar) met up at the "Attack of Fire" festival in February 1990. Although they were already playing respectively in DENET and ROOT, there seemed to exist such a special link between them that they soon ended up writing songs together. Later on, future ROOT René "Evil" Kostelnik (drums) joined and in December 1991, a year after the fall of the communist regime, they entered a cheap studio in Ostrava to lay on tape their first batch of songs. Despite being recorded in only two days with no budget (actually, when the engineer discovered the band couldn"t pay him, he confiscated Blackie"s effect pedal!) with some cheap instruments borrowed here and (including a homemade fretless bass!) and with lyrics sung mostly in Czech, the seven tracks of "Rev Smrti" still roar nineteen years later as loudly as they initially did in 1991. Take "Demons of Darkness" for instance: during almost five minutes, it combines with great effect the roughness of early BATHORY with Sadus techno-thrash leanings and Kreator"s cruelty, backed off by a totally berserk guitar solo! The greatness Crux had managed to achieve with such limited means is strengthen by the facts that this was the only recording made by this specific line-up and that less than eighteen months later, after one more demo ("Terrific Visions"), they sadly were no more... Buried but not forgotten by the true maniacs...
Now, after being reissued on CD by Leviathan and I Hate respectively but long out of print despite the high demand, thanks to DOOMENTIA RECORDS and its now well-respected "Czech Demo Series" "Rev Smrti" is for the first time available on vinyl, with extensive liner notes and tons of unreleased pictures. And through this perfect format for this kind of purely analogue and old-school recording, you can relive the beauty of the early Czech extreme metal and (re)discover one of its most unique if ephemeral hidden treasure: Crux!
