Those that felt the obscure vibrations of The Devil’s Blood debut EP Come Reap still get the chills upon the first chords of any of its tracks. The Dutch cultist’s second offering The Time of No Time Evermore though, simply provided for a cooler experience. By cooler we mean, colder; cooler not as in better, but as in more calculated and less soulful, where the songs offered nothing new upon subsequent spins, where all was revealed at once and the payback was these miserable little nuggets. The unidimensional production work did not help project the band’s ambitions.
Clearly, The Devil's Blood has rethought its strategy and has certainly gone back to the stereo leanings of their start. It’s a welcomed back approach that serves their warm tones and mid tempo hard rock well. In The Thousandfold Epicentre for instance, the band sounds less threatening than ever. Just check the ‘lalalalalalalala, etc, etc etc,‘ on “Die the Death”, a catchy almost folksy cut that follows up the jolly vocal lines with gorgeous acoustic picking. Past those two nuggets and The Devil’s Blood completely reverts back to the groovy guitar arrangements of Come Reap; where solos flourish and flourish and flourish and the payoff is pretty much everywhere.
It all results on The Thousandfold Epicentre not being as immediate as Come Reap, mostly because the way the songs are structured makes you feel as if they are constantly building up and though the plateau or the summit is always the same, amazing guitar work and eternal vocals, it is with repeated listens that the songwriting comes afloat as controlled, measured and free of all excesses and that the choruses and the always pivotal voice of F (The Mouth of Satan) become this well of copious beauty.
The Thousandfold Epicentre does not contain a song as memorable as Come Reap's “The Heaven’s Cry Out for the Devil’s Blood“, but the individual performances are there and they gel into wonderful creations slowly through repetition, this letting the cycle fuck with your head. Shit you not, just listened to "Fire Burning” seven times in a row and I feel as the effect of the Kool Aid is just starting to kick in.
Official Site
Written by Bobby Peru
