They pretend to be kind of crossover relevant with a taste of German rock but for me it's still some very traditional hardcore that we get with Question Authority. At least, when it's not so much, it's not such a great success. I mean the melodic singing is pretty bad and on the whole, there's strictly nothing original in here. OK the production is not so bad for a hardcore band but that's not enough. I also can hardly stand the spoken parts. So yes, the vocals of Nico should be restricted to hardcore shouts. But even in this field I wonder how he could have decently been compared to Max Cavalera by colleagues of ours... Shouts on "Father" are particularly terrible!

Sometimes the music sounds just like Californian punk rock. Just like the titular song, "Question Authority." One can also notice the lack of personality through very obvious influences. "The God That Failed" from 'the black album' of Metallica clearly initiated "Truth," and the intro riff of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (still Metallica, Ride The Lightning) is shortly played in "G.N.W.P."

Cross X claims to be different about the subjects discussed in their lyrics. Well I see nothing unusual there. It's still about social difficulties and exclusion, misery, racism. Well you know, life is so hard and blah blah blah. Moreover you can find the lyrics in the packaging in a completely fucked order: I don't get the point of this...

Eventually I would say that Question Authority is a pretty poor album. Cross X's music needs to evolve drastically I guess.

written by Hubert Chapuis

Playing time: 36:00