Blood

A potent hybrid of thrash, grind/death and brutal pounding black metal, Blood are a classic of the underground for experiments in violent minimalism.

Blood - Impulse to Destroy (1989)
Blood - Christbait (1992)
Blood - O Agios Pethane (1993)
Blood - Mental Conflicts (1994)
Blood - split with Dead Infection (1994)
Blood - Depraved Goddess (1996)
Blood - Gas, Flames, Bones (1998)
Blood - Dysangelium (2003)

Impulse to Destroy

Morbid

1989

Production: Varying types of demo and garage sound.

Review: Most of grindcore in an effort to be profound and through equalization of reaction to inflection has forgotten the fundamentalist absurdism that makes this genre more than complaints so fervent they have become incoherent; Blood, like Blasphemy, recapture this spirit through a metal-tinged airburst meted out in staccato spurts of blasting, gurgling, roaring mayhem. Their distinctiveness comes from the tendency to do so with epic topics distilled into concrete examples from biology, philosophy and the occult, creating like Dead Infection an anecdotal metaphor but in a postmodern style which, like the novels giving that name to a genre, unite disparate disciplines around common abstract themes.

Tracklist:

1. intro
2. wings of declaration
3. foulmouthed politicians
4. dogmatize
5. spasmo paralytic dreams
6. linear logical intelligence
7. why?
8. the greed
9. blood
10. retrogression
11. technical abortion
12. beyond time and space
13. celtic compost
14. jesus never lived
15. economic cancer
16. ventilator integrator
17. a big cake
18. tumor
19. unsophisticated sorehead
20. compulsion
21. bloody season
22. necromancer
23. skate is great
24. no regret
25. great unit
26. scuffing horror
27. recognize yourself
28. terroraise
29. collision
30. outro (febrile massacre)
Length: 42:03

Blood - Impulse to Destroy 1989/1994 Morbid Records

Released together on CD, these early works capture the essence of that spirit even if the mechanics remain unrefined and in doing so gives us a window into the formative drive behind the bizarre and ironically deconstructive music. Like early Napalm Death, these songs are an extension of punk to incorporate the more facile structural vocabulary of metal, while aesthetically communicating a sense of extremity and incoherence borne of an inability to reach an audience who, while they can be taught political or moral concepts to repeat in bleating synchronicity, cannot grasp the essence of the situation because they do not take it seriously. Grindcore was a revolution against all rock music, and "Impulse to Destroy" distances the listener from that style while using the techniques of rock music to make sonic rage peaking off the scale.

That is not to say that, like grindcore two years past its formation, this music is one-dimensional -- on the contrary, what makes this and Blasphemy a hybrid of grindcore and epic, black/death metal is its ability to grasp different concepts and moods, from choleric futility to sociopathic melancholy and beyond, and unite them in a worldview in which abstract forms are harmonized across origins. In that sense, the lyrics like the music are pure psychological symbolism arising from the shape of a riff, the texture of voices, or the casual jigsaw that fits together disparate riffs into sentential meaning. From a distance, it is indistinguishable from normal grindcore, but after examination that is the last mistake an experienced listener would make with the music of Blood.

Christbait

1MF

1992

Production: Like a burly coffee, dark and full, slightly degraded by heat.

Review: After a successfully messy grindcore outing, Blood turned toward their death metal influences and made an album with longer songs that aimed at structure and mood instead of an atmosphere of raw impact; the result, while powerful, suffers somewhat from this schizophrenia but revives itself by being the forthright deconstruction most popular music cannot admit it is, gaining from this honesty a momentum toward a revelation of the logical contexture of its mood.

Blood carve out a sonic niche by interspersing longer melodic riffs with the type of percussive budget riff that distinguishes their more grindcore material, creating a hybrid of the powerful American sound like Malevolent Creation and European death metal like Morgoth that mixes easily with their existing epic but minimalist blasting grind. Using serial progressions of riffs, Blood build an intensifying suspension of disbelief in which the reductive nature of external reality shatters any human sounds or organizations, and then, in vertiginous transfers of rhythmic energy, deconstruct with exegesis that places each phrase in a larger context where harmony of note value is absent but narrative of phrases together as a pattern language gains clarity and focus.

Tracklist:
1. Lost Lords (2:05)
2. And No One Cries (2:05)
3. The Last Words (2:36)
4. Scares Of Soul (2:45)
5. Damnation (1:58)
6. Harass (1:12)
7. Join Stock Company (3:05)
8. Final Chasm (0:55)
9. Dogmatize (2:23)
10. Self Immolation (3:17)
11. Widow Path (1:36)
12. Be Doomed (1:06)
13. Bought Beauty (1:27)
14. Past Belief Cessions (1:52)
15. Mass Distortion (3:07)
16. The Greed (2:17)
17. Down To The Swamp (0:50)
18. Technical Abortion (2:05)
19. The Head Of A Dead Cat (0:06)
20. Terroraise (1:24)
Length: 38:11

Melodies rise from a few notes and carefully double back on themselves and transpose similar structures, like folk melodies of the last millenia, giving these songs an ancient air and the gravity that comes from the simple but universal mathematics of modal composition. Like many grindcore bands in the middle 1990s, Christbait sees Blood forsaking the messy and unclear for more rigid but communicative statements, but even in the midst of this influence, these musicians inject ambiguity in the suspense between melodic leads in an effort to dissolve the percussive explosion of a structural undoing they clearly find too literal.

The characteristic monotone, chortling bassy growl and powerful riffs bent out of two chords strung between shuttering rhythms of offtime rhythms begining and ending on points of cadence remain present; musicianship is clearer and more ambitious on these longer songs, which although they do not use radically more riffs levitate those in more challenging tempi and force a greater clarity on guitar and percussion alike. This album rivals the giants of thundering death metal but because it does not linger on the optimal balance of rhythmic hook and drone, and opts instead to create a mood all its own in death metal, never reached the same degree of clarity.

O Agios Pethane

1MF

1993

Production: Turgid churning darkness, very bass intense and capturing rough edges of power chords in a massively present foundation but often distant tone.

Review: Blasting power grindcore hybrid bears the darkness and ambient rolling riff chaos of a black metal band into charging and violent music revealing the subconscious primitivism and regression in human thinking. Dustencrusted throat turbulence mars the percussiveness of perfectly rigid collision riffs, but underneath the conflict move unfolding classically European melodies with a hint of mideval music in their trenchant cyclic emphasis on returning to a stable state.

With rigid and vast low-end vocal percussion accenting the seemingly paradoxical drumming style of thrash music Blood thrust forward their songs at an epic clip of attention, despite the detours of tempo and simple riff variation to provide chorus of bridge. Blasting accumulative violence serves often to connect songs with driving simplifications of major themes to hurl obscurity at the listener like a puking angel. As individual instruments, musical voices are single and repetitive but when placed together they function like an ocean of pinwheels, reflecting a chaos representing many iterations of the same order.

1. Intro (1:28)
2. Kadath (2:16)
3. Cannibal Ritual (1:43)
4. Profanity (0:45)
5. Submission (2:51) (intro 0:33)
6. Sodomize the Weak (1:18)

7. Punishment (2:48)
8. Christbait (1:14)
9. Dread (1:48) (intro 0:10)
10. Wings of declaration (0:33)
11. By the way of grace (2:10)
12. God left the world (0:38)
13. (Instrumental) (0:27)
14. Revelation (0:56)
15. Divine seed (2:45)
16. Spasmoparalytic dreams (1:55) (intro 0:08)

17. Lamentation (3:01)

18. Stream of anguish (1:21)
19. Blood for blood (1:38) (intro 0:05)
20. Outro (0:33)
Length: 32:10

Blood - O Agios Pethane - Grindcore 1994

Song structures evolve to allow intrusive chaos to create momentum refreshed by the the underlying violent conflicts holding this music together, bonding simple elements of song into substructures for assembly. The sensation in the mind of the listener is often similar to that of someone pursued down a maze with many possible pathways, always switching attention to explore a new option or return to a discovered pattern. The abusive thrash of this approach ratifies the hybrid core of this music.

In its obsession with violence and conflict, but insistence upon moments of lucidity to unfold the content of each song, the music of Blood asserts the philosophy of black metal in its postmodern revelations from the obscure, but in its tactical practicionership of destruction Blood is the product of DRI-style thrash and thundering metallic death like Master, Baphomet or Carcass. Aesthetics and imagery fill more of a black metal conceptual role, with topics and techniques in lyric writing similar to those of Dead Infection of Poland, or to a lesser degree, Carcass and Repulsion.

The same broad simplicity that allows comparisons to death metal and grindcore also outline the black metal heritage behind the ambiguous and often mocking riffs in this music. Often deliberately simplistic-sounding and harmonically offensive or ridiculous, these riffs appear early in songs before the melody has come forth in its darkness and dissonant ambiguity under otherwise definitive, strongly expressed chords in a rhythmic code of downstrumming. Hybrid as this nature is it brings a paradoxical, beautiful spirit to deliberately ugly and violent music.

Tracklist
1. Intro (Tentacles) (1:18)
2. Insomnia (1:37)
3. Toothache (1:13)
4. Master's Clemency (1:17)
5. Secrets Of Blood (1:32)
6. Mental Conflict (2:05)
7. Bleed For Me (2:05)
8. Spreading The Thoughts (1:44)
9. Blood (1:30)
10. Stretched (2:24)
11. Away Is Away (1:54)
12. For Auld Lang Syne (2:05)
13. Crown Court (3:08)
14. Inflame (1:16)
15. Texas Chainsaw Massacre (2:44)
16. Naked Frozen (1:19)
17. Blood Price (1:58)
18. The Favour Of Ecstasy (1:31)
19. Morpheus (2:22)
20. I Dream Dead (3:21)
Length: 38:23

Mental Conflicts (Morbid Records, 1994)
Unlike any other Blood album, Mental Conflicts channels its energy into singleminded riffs strummed quickly over rally beats, creating a style that is both disassociative and intensely familar, in that these humming soaring declining riffs sound like the form of elemental but expressive music used in soundtracks, advertising jingles, Christmas carols and ancient Greek theatrical pieces; they are infusions into the subconscious. As a result, this album exhibits greater subtlety than almost anything else in the grindcore field, but is monolithic and so hard to distinguish between tracks, which is perhaps why this album has been somewhat forgotten in the Blood catalogue. Closer to a smooth fusion of early 1980s punk hardcore and the early days of death metal, songs are rings of riffs joined between two motif halves, one associated with riffs and one with choruses, with bridges taking on the characteristic of either depending on which direction they intend to spin the song. Percussion here is more varied and carries more suspense than other albums. Where other albums were more early Napalm Death and Repulsion influenced, this work from Blood sounds more like Bolt Thrower or Carbonized.

Tracklist
Dead Infection
1. From the Anatomical Deeps (02:06)
2. Life of a Surgeon (02:44)
3. Her Heart in Your Hands (01:36)
4. The Firing Ground (01:34)
Blood
5. Revelation (live) (00:45)
6. Morpheus (live) (02:20)
7. Blood for Blood (live) (01:20)
Length: 12:25

split with Dead Infection (Morbid, 1994)
This recording comes to us from a show in Mannheim, Germany on February 26, 1994. Live, Blood play their riffs faster and with fewer hard percussive stops, giving this material a searing feel where other recordings are more like dropping lead. The two songs from O Agios Pethane and one from Mental Conflicts come together as if from the same era thanks to this higher speed, which gives a unique and more crustcore impression of the earlier material while giving the latter a hastier more percussive feel, as if executing chiasmus on the styles between two albums. Probably best reserved for fanatically committed collectors, this split nonetheless gives us a glimpse of a band confident enough in several styles to cross between them like a double agent.

Tracklist
1. Intro (Zombia)
2. Roman whores
3. Euthanastic inclination
4. Blasphemy
5. Die Leiche
6. Bloody Season
7. The god you save
8. Unholy god
9. Dark conscience
10. Wage war
11. Bastard son
12. Maggotstorm
13. Christian Holocaust
14. Wie Krieger sterben
15. Fuck Religions
16. Destroy command
17. Fleshhanger (cannibal ritual II)
18. Sinner Knell
19. Execution
20. A burial place
21. An orgy of blood at forest morgue
Length: 35:58

Depraved Goddess (Blood, 1996)
The German grind machine continues its onslaught of mythologically symbolic but apocalyptically earthy conflict in which the icons of modern time are turned into the fears of a nightmare and hallucination through the power of elemental music with chortling blast of rapid blasts of distorted chord. Where most grindcore achieves an uncomfortable level of political or social reality in its music, Blood use some of the technique and sensibilities of black metal to invent a subconscious journey in the visions of the primitive survival-oriented parts of the mind. Gurgling vocals over roaring chord descents and a jubilant bouncing swagger behind verses describing the "or worse" in almost any situation, with guitar contributing an even third of the dialogue with a series of tonal focal points and shaped patterns for riffs and rhythm playing around each point. The shifting of focus raises the level of concentration from the pattern itself to the change in overall perception resulting from the opposite or retrograde motion of two patterns, and in this neurosis of perception Blood achieve a suspension of demands for mainstream reality to regulate cognitive faculties. In the "Depraved Goddess" incarnation of this process, Blood fill out the broader form they carved for themselves on "Christbait," and the result is a highly listenable but still disturbed version of this sonic commando unit.

Tracklist
1. Intro (1:51)
2. Screaming With No Face (1:19)
3. Flames and Gas (1:35)
4. Auto Cannibalism (1:55)
5. Ebola (1:23)
6. Perishment in Utter Ecstasy (1:48)
7. Defaced Total Mutation (1:02)
8. 2011 (0:06)
9. Der Henker (2:48)
10. Fleshconsumer (1:01)
11. Multiglobalised Fallacy (1:20)
12. Derangement (2:34)
13. Woundead (0:41)
14. FH-70mm (1:20)
15. Holy Rot (1:48)
16. Mankind (1:16)
17. Serial Infanticide (2:16)
18. Amputation (1:23)
19. Hecatomb (1:41)
20. Positional Warfare (2:13)
Length: 31:22

Gas, Flames, Bones (Rough Trade, 1999)
The return of greater obscurity to the music of Blood takes place on this standard production album with a penchant for tightening songs around rhythms, but an equal ability to allow some of its more ambitious moments to dissipate in its quest for the ongoing growth of the nightmare grind album. Where previous works had attempted to inject space into songs, the playing here seems almost designed to cram more texture and iteration frequencies of riff recombinations which advance the temporal divisions of the perceptive horizon by forcing the mind to perceive and classify events more quickly. Many parts of this work are enigmatic in a dark simplicity and a coherence more chaotic enough than any known method that it merits a separate classification. Often a song will rotate in pure rhythm until a throttling of two chords in textural patterns forces an explication of inward strife and reduction to a semi-melodic charging lead sequence. Songs capture atmosphere, and this album as a whole while fractured offers an insight into the surpressed iconography behind the bizarre fearful visions of a normal daily existence.

Tracklist
1. Blood Pulsation (2:05)
2. Adrenaline (1:07)
3. Schizophrenic Wisdom (1:32)
4. Penalty (1:47)
5. Wormbody (1:41)
6. Where Is Your Savior Now (1:11)
7. Jesus Descent (1:22)
8. Evil Saints (1:29)
9. Poison For The Soul (1:49)
10. The Heretic (0:53)
11. Randy Mary (1:33)
12. Breaking Bounds (3:08)
13. Anthem Of Scorn (1:45)
14. Garbage Can Biotope (2:36)
15. Godmorphosis (1:25)
16. Hate Speech (1:19)
17. Malicious Awakening (2:32)
18. Demons Call (1:39)
19. Son Of Shadows (1:59)
20. Devil Dance (1:46)
21. Dysangelium (4:33)
Length: 39:11

Dysangelium (Morbid Records, 2003)
When thrash died in the mid-1980s, most of its energy transferred to grindcore, which quickly splintered with most of it becoming what thrash did not want to be, which was more protest rock that took political concepts seriously and so bought into the status quo; a few bands broke away and, following the metal model where fantasy is a gateway to understanding the rules of power in an amoral nature abundant with horror and struggle but also intensely delicate beauty, found ways to craft metaphorical statements that joined the ideas of "only death is real" and "protest and survive." Blood, arising out of that time period, has consistently crafted grindcore/metal in the short bursts of song that thrash favored, giving it a careless air despite its deliberate focus on the aspects of horror and struggle in life as expressed in subconscious neo-Jungian symbols that bring to bear our fears and through them, speaks of the human struggle for acceptance of a world that is equal parts beauty and terror. They do this by crafting songs from primal rhythms that resemble passage through scenes of violence: stark dynamics, dark trudging dirges, interrupted impacts and staccato disintegration. Each song drops into a powerful riff that conveys its forward motion and then, after cycling through a handful of motives expressed in "budget riffs" of a chord or two in rhythmically powerful arrangement, come through to The Other Side where a counterpart riff deconstructs and recontexts that forward drive. While this music is clearly offhand in composition and playing, there is more at work here than Blood themselves will admit, which is a vision of the sublimated psychological struggle of humanity to find meaning and motion in a world so often sinking into the darkness of horror, depression, terror and fatalism.