Origin: Edmonton, Alberta, Canada Release year: 2010 Label: Profound Lore Genre: Death / Black Metal

Do you like sour candies? If you do, you’ll know the experience of the first taste being bitterly sour so that you feel like your face is going to turn inside out, but, there’s that hint and then after-taste of real sweetness that makes you eat another. Before long you’re popping the damn things like the bitterness never existed and thinking they’re the best stuff ever. That is how this album hit me. The perfect sour candy.

Blood Revolt is a trio of veteran extreme metalers. James Read (drums) and Chris Ross (guitars) have played with Axis of Advance and Revenge, among others. Vocalist A.A. Nemtheanga is probably best know from Primordial, though he’s also worked with several others. If you’re familiar to any degree with these bands then you may be starting to see how the sour candy came in.

Indoctrine is the only release by these guys and the only release that I know of with this particular genre blend. Instrumentally this is pretty much “war” Metal. Blackened Death or Deathened Black or…..you know. Blasting drums and pure sonic assault from the guitar. But that’s selling it short. There is so much more, amid the break-neck-speed parts there’s plenty of groove and well placed moments of relative calm (remember, I said “relative calm”. I wouldn’t call anything about this album “calm”). There are even some moments of good lead work.

Vocally is where I was initially sour-shocked. The great majority of vocals are clean. Gruff, wailing and agonized, but clean. This contrast to the gutteral only style of music they’re sang over at first seemed out of place, yet it had that back-ground sweetness and after-taste that says “gimmee more!”. After several listens that bitter reaction is a fading memory. The emotive quality of these cleans played off of the rasps, snarls, growls, spoken-word sections and few but essential samples is what really makes this unique.

I usually don’t pay much attention to lyrics so this album has a personal bonus for me. It is a concept album told in the first-person view of a man spiralling into madness. I haven’t completely grasped it yet but it seems to be a suicide bomber tale, I could be wrong.

I’m going to say this is a love it or hate it kind of album. I love it. The production is just muddied enough. Too clean and polished of a production would have stripped this of it’s power. It comes across as three guys playing something that they love and telling you a hell of a story while they do it.

I must thank Sanakan at Equivoke for posting this album and bringing it to my attention. I found it on iTunes and you can find Blood Revolt at Facebook.

P.S. If you know of anything similar to this please comment!

My Grade: 9.0/10
Buy this when:

Tags: black, Canadian, death

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 19th, 2012 at 8:35 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.