Bloodiest – Bloodiest

Anemic

Bloodiest’s eponymous album begins somewhat abruptly with a tom-beat and a sidewinding riff on opener “Mesmerize” and some unconvincing spoken-sang vocals. Imagine an anemic Black Sabbath track with a plodding mid-tempo rhythm track. The track does evolve to more post-rock oriented heights of caterwauling guitar that finally brings some life to the track, before a kind of call and response part between noise guitars and vocals that lapses into a spoken word accompanied by a somewhat knotty riff. The track is indicative of the rest of the record. The band and album’s moniker (Bloodiest) is a regrettable misnomer.

Second track, “The Widow,” attempts to reach the heights of Pallbearer by combining piano with some emotive doom metal but frankly, outside of the climactic scream and harmonic minor riff overtop of Rachmaninoff-esque piano chords, this track leaves much to be desired as well. Namely, a sense of desire.

Metal, especially Sabbath-esque doom, has always traded in disaffection and alienation, two emotions marked by the desire for something nebulous or even unobtainable perhaps, but desire nonetheless. It’s what drives the genre. But Bloodiest is marked far more by bathos than violence. When the entirety of an album is mid-tempo doom metal cum occasional half-aloof instrumental excursions and the mix is a bit thin and the vocals fluctuate between out of tune sprechstimme intoned by Layne Staley without any of his unhinged self-loathing or decadent despair, you’re left wondering why you’ve even bothered to invest the time necessary to finish the record. There’s little to distinguish one track from the next. There’s no shift in mood and the mood that dominates the record is not convincingly rendered. If you’re a fan of the genres mentioned in this review than go listen to Pallbearer or dig up some 40 Watt Sun. Bloodiest isn’t particularly tight, menacing, or inspiring. Given the anemic effort displayed on the record, I suppose there is one grain of truth to the band and album’s title—if this was in fact the “bloodiest” effort they could put forth, given the anemic nature of the music and performances (even by penultimate track “Separation” we’ve seen no growth—the same somewhat sloppy mid-tempo doom and repetitive riffs and drum parts), then it is patently obvious why this record is dead on arrival.