Review: Zone Zero – The Lost Legacy (2-CD 2014 Shadow Kingdom)

 Christmas seems to have arrived early this year for worshippers of classic Swedish metal from the eighties. This is probably the most essential release since the Detest-compilation by Stormspell Records. Zone Zero is simply one of those bands that musically almost were on the same level as Heavy Load, Gotham City and Silver Mountain, to mention a few, but remained even more forgotten since they never released an album.

 Now that their complete works are finally available, hopefully they'll get the recognition they have always deserved. Songs like Genocide Patrol, Breaker Of The Chains and Demon From Kingdom Of Death (!) could impossibly be disliked by any heavy metal maniac. From start to finish, everything is just so typical for it's time, yet so timeless.

 Something I like is the fact that the songs are in chronological order, which means that the first five tracks are live recordings. Normally, live-recordings are regarded as bonus-material that you don't listen to as much as the studio-tracks, but in this case you have to. Which is great, since the sound quality of those recordings is very good, even better than some of the the demo- and rehearsal-tracks. Four new songs are also included, which, by obvious reasons, have a way more modern sound, but still maintains the high quality.

 In conclusion, this releases compiles some of the most hidden and well kept Swedish heavy metal treasures. Don't hesitate, go on and discover this band immediately, if you haven't done so already. 9/10 /H