I’m sure many people in the Extreme Metal world by now know who Bloodbath are. For those who don’t, this is an old school Stockholm Death Metal super-group made up mostly of members of Opeth and Katatonia, though now featuring Per ‘Sodomizer’ Eriksson (ex-21 Lucifers, ex-Genocrush Ferox) on second guitar. Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt has also returned as vocalist (having been absent from 2004’s ‘Nightmares made Flesh’), which will no doubt please many people (including this reviewer).
After hearing Axenrot drum so many times for Opeth, it is a tad bewildering hearing him in drum annihilation mode. Akerfeldt is also out of context for me in a way, even though his vocals of course fit perfectly within this realm of musical ferocity.
EP opener ‘Blasting the Virginborn’ begins at full speed (as the title suggests), in almost monotone Death Metal style, Akerfeldt growling litanies to kingdom come whilst the rest of the band are hell-bent on making as much noise (albeit great sounding noise!) as possible. There are some gloriously evil melodies, reminiscent of songs like ‘Cry my Name’ (from their debut album ‘Resurrection through Carnage’) which are used at first to slow the song down and give it some dynamics, but eventually adapted as blast sections. A very good memorable start indeed!
‘Weak Aside’ fades in with another dark melody, before they decide that’s not fun, and unleash (pun unintended) another blasted monotone Death riff. This time they try a few rhythms and it flows very well with Mr Akerfeldt’s vocal patterns. Something about burning the pastures haha!
The first Bloodbath track written by Eriksson is ‘Sick Salvation’, and relies more heavily on thrash beats and slower double bass rhythms which are welcome after the almost relentless snare attack we have had to endure so far.
Final track ‘Mouth of Empty Praise’ reminds vaguely at first of newer Suffocation, but don’t take this too literally please, as they’re very different bands. Most of the song features slower rhythms with the odd slow blast and is extremely friendly if you like slower tempos to head-bang to, with the guitars almost stop-starting in places.
This is very pleasing. I may be a biased Akerfeldt fan-boy, but I definitely enjoyed this EP. According to the Opeth vocalist, this is the best thing he’s heard since Domination (Morbid Angel’s fourth offering), so you can’t go too far wrong surely.
http://www.bloodbath.biz
http://www.myspace.com/bloodbathband
http://www.peaceville.com
