Another pretty new Finnish black metal band has been blasting in my apartment lately. It’s the 2 man band Black Blood with their first full length album “Cryptic Rituals”.

After the mandatory bad intro, a dark atmosphere fills the room as a thick fog. The dark downtunet, but yet cold guitar flows from the speakers, as blood from a freshly stabbed corpse. It is not the most inventive or new guitarriffs, which is delivered, but they are very effective and interesting. Most of the time do they reflect old Burzum riffs, due to the composition and the raw and dirty guitarsound.

The drums are very low in the mix, but with some will, the blasting snaredrum can be heard and at times the toms too. I’m sure the bassdrums are getting kicked a lot, though it is very hard to find them most of the time. The cymbals are flowing wild around in the sound picture, at times hard to hear, other times in front of everything. When they are in front of everything the effect of them are great, very disturbing and cold, it invokes a great sinister and insecure atmosphere for the listener, intentional or not.

Vocal wise is the release interesting too, a cold dark scream, at times low and frustrated at other times high and furious. A great addition to the overall atmosphere on the album. The songs are wellwritten and goes straight to the bone of the listener. No hocus pocus or fancy things wrapped in plastic, you get what you can hear the first time, nothing unveils itself after some time.

A lot of people complain about the lack of innovation and progression within black metal. In my opinion a very few bands are capable of progressing a genre without losing the elements, that makes a genre. Black Blood stays true to the black metal roots and delivers a great album, with no compromise and a lot of darkness and coldness, isn’t that what black metal is about? Pure evil and hate put to tape… It is in my eyes and ears and that task has this band done well. The music is raw, evil and hardhitting, the production is dirty, raw and low. I don’t think there is spent a lot of time on mixing the album, this is the evil of Black Blood straight from them to you.

[This review was first published on the now defunct scandinavianmetal.info webzine]