The Devil’s Blood were special. I heard their demo and it blew me away with its blend of 70s psyche/occult rock infused by their love of artists like the great Roky Erickson and driving, song orientated metal with a touch of Blue Oyster Cult. I loved their first single and E.P. when they began to spread their wings, and the sheer weight and tripped out esotericism of their first two albums. I was mesmerised by the quality and intensity of their live show that could challenge black metal acts for the religious and philosophical impact. I even realised that the end would be sudden, final. I hoped that it would be a blaze of glory.
We’ll firstly, though I have no doubt that opinions will differ, this is no sunburst, light-bringer blaze but it is a worthy album. Secondly, when is a posthumous album not an album?
Apparently, so the PR goes, when after realising that the band has run its course and have had a little while to reflect they believe that despite the album being unfinished and the production quality of what they have laid down being not of a full album quality, that the tracks were so good that ‘they deserved to be part of The Devil’s Blood canon’. I of course hear more cynical mutterings in my hind brain, particularly having heard the next direction, but this is The Devil’s Blood and they never seemed less than scrupulously honest in their dealings with their fans and so I ignore that mendacious crap and take them at their word as they deserve to be.
Which means this has to be judged alongside their previous offerings, by those standards and with no concession to its unfinished state.
I had wondered where the hell the band could go after The Thousandfold Epicenter, so final and extensive was its dense path. The answer seems to be a little more of the same but with a subtle difference and a look back to where they came from even.
Everything is here: The beautiful, melodic guitar breaks and the riffs. The extended musical wandering in looped melodies and added themes. That soul tearing voice. Listen to ‘Dance Of The Elements’ or the twenty minute epic of opener ‘I Was Promised A Hunt’ and the patterns and swirls that pulled the last album through chaos to aftermath are there. Distortion rises and falls and pulls you through, inside out, making you look back at the musical ribbon you have followed. ‘White Storm Of Teeth’ becomes hypnotic, trance like repetition keeping you rooted. The Devil’s Blood had done with conventional, short, dark and sharp songs long ago; ‘Christ Or Cocaine’ and ‘I’ll Be Your Ghost’ were left on the shore of a river of gold flowing through strange realms and states. What we followed is an ethereal dance, led by The Voice, one that whispered its own philosophy to us as we tried to orientate ourselves.
At times here, the immediateness of those older days returns: Listen to the echoes there in the opening of ‘Tabula Rasa’, a guitar journey which ends our time with the band in beautiful, resonant ways. Listen to the breaks in other tracks. Just listen.
But for all that this indeed does deserve to be part of the story of The Devil’s Blood, for all that the music they wrote is every bit of the quality of their previous psychedelic, occult, philosophical musical journey, the production allows none of the blossoming of previous albums, no sense of depth to the sounds or the time-lapse opening of the musical flower as you see petal after petal peel back. In short, the only thing, the only thing that prevents this being a stone cold classic is that thing the band decided they could not do: Finish what they created. What happened that brought them to the point that those last few steps could not be taken I suspect may never be fully divulged, but what is a small distance to me the listener was clearly a Rubicon to the band.
More immediate than its predecessor but still as multifaceted, as dense, as beautiful but lacking the jeweller’s final touch. Perhaps that frailty is fitting, the last imperfection remaining to prove that they were human. Beautifully packaged, rich within but in the end a finger-tip away from its final goal.
Some may be disappointed, perhaps more by the fact the band is ended, but this is no short change ending. Just not the conflagration I wanted. Still essential, still unique. And it burns like no one else nonetheless.
(8.5/10 Gizmo)
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