With their hilariously slapdash album covers and medieval macho-man musical mindset to match, Germany's obscure Cutty Sark gave better known metal warriors such as Manowar and Running Wild a run for their money in terms of mid-1980's "true metal" credibility, if not long-term success. A going concern in the underground since as early as 1976, the Bonn-based quartet of Conny Schmitt (vocals), Uwe Cossmann (guitar), Helge Meier (bass), and Micki Schmitt (drums) eventually signed with Belgium's Mausoleum label in 1984 and quickly unleashed their descriptively named Hard Rock Power E.P. and debut full-length Die Tonight. Both contained elemental Euro-metal ingredients of the day, and would later often be cited as early examples of still germinating power metal, but ultimately lacked the songwriting maturity of most contemporaries. Hard working to the last, if nothing else, Cutty Sark still managed to squeak off another album in the form of 1985's Heroes, but were afterwards irretrievably lost to heavy metal memory -- a brief 1998 reunion (including new bassist Torsten Pitz for an album called Regeneration) notwithstanding. ~ Eduardo Rivadavia