This is an album for guitar aficionados, let’s be clear about that from the outset. If the instrument speaks to you, if you find yourself leaning in when a solo builds, if slide guitar makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, if you know the difference between technique and soul and love it most when a musician has both, ‘Memorial’ will feel like coming home.

Rooted deep in Delta blues but wearing its classic rock and indie influences openly and proudly, Led Zeppelin, Hendrix, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Elmore James all audible in its bones, with flashes of Nine Inch Nails in the more distorted vocal moments, Massey’s Cross have created something that feels simultaneously timeless and absolutely their own. The vocals here are considered and deliberate, sitting more as texture than centrepiece, the icing rather than the cake, but crucially, that feels like a choice, not a limitation. Because the cake itself is extraordinary.

The album opens with ‘Stranger in the Doorway’, announcing itself with a dirty, full-bodied guitar entry and doesn’t waste a moment before a soaring countermelody is layered over the grungy underlayer, fuzzy and warm and slightly distorted, megaphone-effect vocals conjuring images of a basement session. Classic rock in its bones, with a nineties-tinged atmosphere that fans of Zeppelin and Hendrix will find immediately comfortable and quietly thrilling.

‘Sweet Jezebel’ pivots to a cleaner guitar and drum roll entry, with the electric guitar stepping forward and the vocals settling further back, letting the blues do the storytelling. And what a story, the age-old sweet-and-sour of love, anchored by a green-eyed girl and a lyric that stops you in your tracks; “a little bit of honey for a whole lot of sting.” The guitar work on this track is remarkable in its dexterity, and the light drum touch is exactly the right call, keeping space open for the melody to breathe and the fretwork to dazzle.

‘Gospel of Luther’ opens with vinyl crackle, and just like that, you’re in an old shed somewhere, the smell of wood and dust and history in the air. The distorted vocals are rounder here, more settled, and the track leans fully into old gospel blues territory; illness, preachers, the Devil at the door, the church looking the other way. It’s a brilliant, knowing homage to the genre’s roots, and one that I suspect would be absolutely electric live, the kind of song that gets a crowd clapping without anyone needing to ask.

‘Take It As It Comes’ shakes things up with a more upbeat albeit quieter energy, adding keyboard to the mix and showcasing a level of guitar dexterity that genuinely makes you put down whatever you’re doing and just listen. The track conjures a smoky bar, late evening, something almost sync in its ease, before pivoting back, around the three-and-a-half-minute mark, to the raw electric power that is this album’s truest heartbeat.

‘Prairie Nights’ settles back into what it does best; heavy guitars, solid drums, chunky blues, and observational storytelling that sits back and lets the riffs do the talking. It’s the track that made me want to turn the volume up and just let it wash over everything.

‘Please Take This Heartache’ nods squarely at Zeppelin and Hendrix again, with a touch of Lenny Kravitz in the texture, loosely distorted and fuzzy and beautifully balanced. The sentiment here is one of weary, willing emotional captivity; the drag of heartache, the strange pull of pain you can’t quite let go of. “Smile never reaches your face”… ooooffff, that’s quite a line, underpinned by a guitar break that carries the sentiment forward melodically, and would hold it without needing another single word.

‘Wandering’ brings the pace down with an acoustic guitar intro and what sounds like a box drum, introducing the quietly affecting lyric “left a bit of my heart on the table.” It’s a track that holds things lightly, leaving doors open, inviting the listener to finish the thought. And it may well be doing something clever with its title; ‘wandering’ and ‘wondering’ sitting close enough together to feel deliberate, the two states blurring into one.

‘Quarantine’ closes the album without a single word, and it doesn’t need any. Pure guitar and synth in conversation, drum-led rhythm as the bass layer, reverb turned up to fill the room. I suspect this track may have been born somewhere in the strange suspended time of the pandemic, and it carries that feeling, of waiting, of space, of something building toward release. Live, with the right light show, this could open or close a show to brilliant effect. When the cymbal hits at the end, you understand exactly why no lyrics were needed. The crowd will definitely go wild.

‘Memorial’ is not an album of easy hooks or instant gratification. It’s an album that asks you to sit with it, to listen properly, to let the guitars speak. Massey’s Cross is more musician than storyteller in the conventional sense, but that is no criticism. Some of the greatest stories are told without words, and on this record, every track has something to say. Turn it up. Let it in.

31st May 2026