I love Firehouse, I appreciated Furyon and I consider the two discs by Pride the yin and yang of melodic hard rock of early 2000s, but I stumbled on Rubicon Cross by chance, as if it was an obscure new band to discover and make my own unbeknownst to the masses. Only later I realized that the band members were already familiar to me and came from the bands I mentioned above. The facts? A few minutes of listening and I was taken for the jugular, definitely hooked. The intensity of these ten tracks, the dense and sincere songwriting and the way the band has built his own musical identity, despite coming from beaten paths of classic rock, are amazing. And the credit equally goes distributed between the two protagonists, CJ Snare (Firehouse) and guitarist Chris Green (Pride, Furyon), and the rest of the crew, featuring bass player Simon Farmery (also from Pride and Furyon, co-author of “Save Me Within”, one of the highlights of the disc), drummer Robert Behnke (Seventh Omen) and second guitarist Jeff Lerman. It’s like anger, tension and the gloomy and caustic shades of Furyon (the black, bold and aggressive evolution of Pride) were harmonized and oxygenated by Snare’s crystal-clear, emotional and street-wise voice. He managed songs like ‘Bleed With me’ and ‘Next Worst Enemy’ – the manifesto of the Rubicon Cross sound but also the megaphones of the experiences shared by Green and Snare in terms of real life and relationships – with a pathos so powerful that I haven’t felt since ‘Reach for The Sky’ or ‘Hold The Dream’. On the other hand, Green does not spare cavernous distortions and extra-low tones, relying on sounds that are abreast of the times, although extremely polished, and making a sharp blend of classic and modern hard rock possible. A special mention goes to ‘Save Me Within’, simply a shout of pain and despair mixed with hope, a ballad that is not a ballad, in which you would like crying, screaming and punching a mirror.

In music, it’s not only the notes that count, otherwise it would be just math. It’s how much emotion you can put between one note and another that counts.

01. Locked And Loaded
02. Next Worse Enemy
03. Bleed With Me
04. Save Me Within
05. You Will Remember Me
06. Moving On
07. R U Angry
08. Shine
09. Kill Or Be Killed
10. All The Little Things