Artist: Blood Revolt
Title: Indoctrine
Type: Album
Label: Metal Blade

Did you hear the one about the Irishman and two Canadians? Well it goes a bit like this! It seems right now is a good time for collaborative efforts, probably as festival season is upon us and labels are not so keen to release stuff by bands playing at their day jobs. This is one such example and a very interesting one as well, showing two very different facets coming into partnership. As far as the instrumental assault (and that is the exact word) is concerned we have members of bestial Canadian bands Axis Of Advance, Revenge and Conqueror on board; J Read on drums and C Ross strings. Heading up the vocals a man who should need little introduction is Alan "Nemtheanga" Averill of Primordial. So we have fast all out brutality meeting passion and heartfelt crooning then, as the singer has not done anything in the way of rasping since Imrama, or is he going to change style? Well basically no, although it does give him a bit more scope for occasional growls but on the whole there is little in the way of compromise from any of the parties.

We start with a sniper sample on ‘Salvation At The Barrel Of A Gun’ and I am taking a guess without cheating that it may well be from ‘Enemy At The Gates.’ The shot merges with the drums piling in and I am going to say from the off that Read’s performance on this album is phenomenal. You are given time to become acclimatised before the first encounter with the melodious croon and then more savage clean diatribe from Averill carries itself fragrantly over the instrotumult. It pretty much focuses and enforces the melody behind the music itself and the lyrics are intriguing. Having said that, there are times on this album when it seems like the singer has randomly picked a book of poetry off the shelf, opened a page and began reciting. ‘Dead City Stare’ focuses on urban collapse and there is certainly a message behind some of these numbers and it does kind of make a change listening to music this extreme with vocals that are easy to decipher. Still there are some distempered roars, rasps and growls as in ‘Bite The Hand, Purge The Flesh,’ and in contrast now the music starts out more down tempo before bursting into life. It’s impossible not to headbang to this brutality and I am now really wondering if this is ever going to be witnessed live, although naturally realising this is pretty unlikely. By now also the lyrics are really getting beneath the skin and it’s all beginning to make sense as one realises that this has a theme behind it which goes perfectly with the musical violence, being one that many of us think about on a daily basis, ‘going postal!’

Make no mistake this is a challenging disc although if you like the two different stylistic approaches, which I certainly do, once the novelty has been won over it really is quite accessible and easy to get into. Things gel when perhaps they shouldn’t and in the end you are drawn in by both the power and passion behind the overall performance. Would it be the perfect soundtrack to listen to whilst going postal? This particular writer is still debating that particular notion but when they prise that Mp3 player out of what remains of my still smoking corpse’s pocket there is a good chance that it will have at least been a contender.

http://www.myspace.com/bloodrevolt
http://www.bloodrevolt.com