By Rob Kachluba

They might be called Southern Cross, but don’t let the name fool you. This ain’t no southern rock band. Instead, Southern Cross is a prog/power metal band from Quebec that has been causing quite a bit of a stir on some message boards with their brand of hooky, crunchy metal. At times they have an aggressive edge to their style not unlike older Evergrey; I also hear some Serenity in their music, but heavier and not as bombastic. There are some absolutely huge melodies going on here and the singer has a nice range. Some epic moments are accented in the songwriting thanks to colouring created by some very tasty keyboards. One could easily be fooled that this is some veteran Euro prog metal band – they are that good. With Down Below, Southern Cross have written and performed an album’s worth of very well done song orientated prog/power metal that you can nicely head bang to as well.

7.5