Release
date: 19th January 2018. Label: Blues For The Red Sun. Format: CD/DD
Vol
II – Tracklisting
Plague
Warsaw
Countercult
Brigade
Harakiri
LXXX
Wealth is Nothing
Sinking Ships
Members
BASS/VOCAL- Karl
Pedersen
GUITAR/VOCAL - Mads
Ystmark
GIUTAR- Jonas
Helgesen Kuivalainen
SYNTH - Marie Sofie
Langeland Mikkelsen
DRUMS - Kenneth
Mortensen
Review
Heave Blood & Die's
new album - II - is an intriguing album indeed. Blending Psychedelic
Doom and Stoner Metal with the band drawing influence from Post-Punk
and Post-Rock. The first half of the album sees the band open with
Plague a heavy psychedelic doom/stoner offering with traces of
distorted post-punk sounds. The riffs are firmly within the heavy
psychedelic world. What makes this song and perhaps the album
standout is their highly inventive use of synths.
Second track - Harikari
- opens with a slow-paced sludgy post-rock groove. The vocals have a
punk style vibe around them before the band move onto more
progressive doom/stoner metal sounds. The song may sound and feel
simple but listen more closely and you can hear a complex sounding
song with many different elements to it. The synths add a trippy
psychedelic level of weirdness with the riffs keeping the whole thing
together.
Third track - Warsaw -
is a dirge ridden sludgier effort with the band losing some of the
psychedelic gloss they created on the opening two songs. It's quite
depressing in parts with the lyrics containing post-doom and gloom
bleak themes. The song does try to match the upbeat psychedelic
madness of the earDier songs but fails to do so. That's a good thing
as this song shows a different side to the bad. Sludgy Punk/Doom
Guitars matched against a more aggressive Post-Rock/Stoner Metal
attitude.
The first part of the
album ends with the next two songs on the album LXXX and Counter
Cult. Both of these tracks offer genuine exciting moments of
post-doom/stoner metal weirdness with Counter Cult being one of the
standout songs on the album. As it has a more frantic Doom/Stoner
Metal atmosphere that truly allows the band to fully explore their
musical identity.
The second half of the
album contains four songs - Wealth Is Nothing, Brigade, Sinking
Ships, and Krokodil carry on the heavy psychedelic experimental feel
of the album but with the focus being more on Psychedelic Stoner
Metal. The vocals contain the usual raucous punk-rock/sludge style
and it works superbly well.
It's perhaps not as
strong as the frantic first half but I did enjoy the musical
experimentation more here. As the band play a more expansive
Post-Metal/Doom/Stoner Metal sound. The riffs are a mixture of angry
fast-paced moments and slow-paced sludgy sounds. The standout track
on this half has to be Brigade. The intelligent drumming of Kenneth
allows the music to be played more freely.
Elements of Mastodon
can be heard here especially when the band opt for a more progressive
metal sound. You have to applaud for Heave Blood & Die for doing
something different and almost pulling it off.
The album can be quite
confusing and maybe messy in places but it's still an emotionally
charged and hugely entertaining album that offers something different
within the Hard Rock/Heavy Metal world.
Words
by Steve Howe
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