Blooddawn – The Enlightenment
Coming from the same city as Black Metal founders Venom will always produce high expectations. Although Blooddawn’s previous release was pretty chaotic this plants a heavily booted kick up its arse and marks a significant progression for the band …and meets the expectations of the Black Metal public.
Hostilities begin with a minute of electronic-sounding machine guns blazing, then a hefty riff pummels them out of the way. Like a musical pyroclastic flow, the guitars, drums and vocals blast towards you all together. Anaal Nathrakh always spring to mind when I listen to Blooddawn, which is unfair because this makes quite an impression, has its own unique harsh ambiance and really puts recent stuff by Anaal to shame.
From the first four minutes it’s evident that there is a great deal more variation in the compositions this time round. Plentiful layers of vocals, more interesting riffs and the use of more atmospheric samples bringing more depth. Vocals by Dom are also vastly improved by greater clarity in the production, layering and quality gravel-fed bellowing like a drunken Minotaur.
For me, the album comes into its own on track three, ‘Nailed Fist’, with a creepy little intro featuring dogs barking then blasting into an archetypal Blooddawn passage. The singing on this bit is nicely fuckin’ weird, like an alien schizo arguing with itself. There’s a quality little bridge consisting of just a few notes played slowly in sequence which is prefect and underlines the more diverse approach. Then we plunge back into the dense, poisonous musical smog, churning, debilitating.
‘Circle of Stars’ is well manic; riffing with background solos, intense ranting and artillery. Prepare yourselves as the last minute or so features some strange violin, plucked straight from a leprechaun’s birthday party. However this jolly ditty is smothered by the dark and oppressive deathspell instrumental ‘The Seventh Trumpet’ which in turn leads onto the final ten minute long ‘Pillars of Fire.’
Every bit as turbulent as its predecessors but with the enhancement of a slower middle section with ancient-sounding spoken word. It is a hymn to the destruction of religion and ends eerily with a sample of a hymn being sung.
This album is unmistakeably Blooddawn yet is massively improved in every aspect. Nothing is under-represented and everything is well balanced and totally audible. Sure, programmed drums aren’t my thing but they are an integral part of Blooddawn’s sound and can be appreciated in that capacity. The band has shown a marked advancement in the structure and composition of their songs and thus created an impressively aggressive album.
I only recently discovered Rahu, who purvey original and very replayable Finish Black Metal of the highest calibre. This is a demo from 2008 that has since been released as part of a best of featuring this and their other demo on one CD.
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Panzer division marduk cover…heh…awesome..
As you say Waff, massively improved. Brutal as hell! ‘Nailed Fist’ has also been added to the Hell Furnace myspace player.