|
Wicked
beautiful record by this Dutch band. Hands down one of
the best vintage sounding records of the last few years.
So much indeed you’ll have to watch for cobwebs. The
Devil’s Blood bring certain doom-laced 70’s laden bands
like Blood Ceremony and Jex Thoth to mind. Though as
esoteric sounding as both, more dynamic and up-tempo
than the latter and way less clumsy than the former, the
real comparison should be made to the Wilson sisters.
Yes, the uneven pair who as Heart wrote some powerful
hard rock in the 70’s and turned into a cheese balloon
in the 90’s, is clearly admired enough to have in these
diabolic group a dead ringer of their best era. Yeah,
that and at the start of “River of Gold”, the sublime
throbbing bassline reminded me of bands like Jefferson
Airplane and even Bad Company. Wow.
What’s most
interesting is how a band as refined as this one manages to
sound haunting without falling into cheap heavy guitars or
resorting to cheesy atmospherics. The Devil’s Blood is more
about the invisible aura, about the era music like this evokes,
about the imagery that comes along. In this way, the listener is
forced to retrieve past associations to position The Devil’s
Blood to their rightful place.
The playing
for instance is subtle, the tuning is discreet. For the
musicians it’s a matter of taste as the guitars have the same
mild witching tone of Witchcraft. A song as expert as expert,
knowledgeable of 70’s song structure and gorgeous as “The
Heavens Cry Out for the Devil’s Blood” is about control and
adhering to parameters as much as it is about paying homage and
creating respectful mindful music. When the guitar wails short,
the tone isn’t strident, when the vocalist extends a syllable
her goal is obviously to serve the song first and foremost.
For a five
song EP Come Reap is very well-rounded and quite the
satisfactory experience. At the end The Devil’s Blood cover Roky
Erickson’s excellent “White Faces” and finishes with a beautiful
10 minute song called “Voodoo Dust”. It’s spacey, dusty indeed,
and free falling. Frankly, the only problem I find here is that
Come Reap is too short of a record. I want more.
MySpace |
|
