Seems like July will be the month of live albums, compilations and reissues. Perhaps that’s a tendency or dubious compensation for the lack of live shows and festivals. Thus, we’ll also have some kind of “retrospective” month. So let’s start from Spanish Death Metal band Bloodhunter, which re-releases its debut self-titled album.
Bloodhunter was formed in 2008 by the founder and main songwriter Dani Arcos. In 2009 vocalist Diva Satanica joins the band. After five years of rehearsals, songwriting and line-up changes the band releases its first demo The First Insurrection and a year later a debut LP named Bloodhunter. The band consistently performs in Spain, sharing stages with Children Of Bodom, At The Gates, Entombed, Suffocation and many others. In 2017 the band’s second album The End Of Faith was released and Bloodhunter goes to the tour. In 2020 Diva Satanica becomes a vocalist of Brazilian all-female band Nervosa and Bloodhunter start working on their third album.
The easiest way would be to succumb to the temptation and compare Bloodhunter with Arch Enemy, but the only resemblance of these bands is a beautiful front woman with extreme vocals but for the rest these are totally different bands, although they relate to the same genre.
The album starts with sinister instrumental “The First Insurrection”, an excerpt from some movie with slow guitar riff. Bass and drums join gradually and then it abruptly turns to brutal oldschool Death Metal. Brutality continues in the next track “The Bloody Throne”; at some moment music goes to Black Metal territory but quite quickly comes back to Death Metal. With this, guitar solo is very melodic, which is quite surprising for such brutality. The bass is also emphasized in the song. Diva Satanica’s extreme vocals are tough and fit the music but I can’t say it’s something outstanding. But who really deserves attention in Bloodhunter is the drummer: his fast, interesting playing with lots of blast beats, double pedals and other techniques, inherent to the genre is the solid foundation of the album.
Actually, most of the songs made here by this equation: brutal guitars, fast drums, extreme vocals and surprisingly melodic solo. Nevertheless, there are some exceptions: “Dying Sun” sounds not maybe less brutal than other songs but it much more melodic and even has its own atmosphere. “Bring Me Horror” with haunting chorus is quite Melodic Death Metal song. “Embrace The Dark Light” has memorable bridge and balances between Thrash and Death Metal (leaning towards Death, of course). And the second instrumental “Ezequiel 25, 17” with famous quote from “Pulp Fiction” has really long melodic solo, being fast and brutal at the same time. All these tracks add some variety to the album, not allowing it to become boring
There are a couple of references to other bands in Bloodhunter: “Come To Me Sorrow” refers to “For Whom The Bell Tolls” and “Ages Of The Darkness” starts quite similar to “Flash Of The Blade”. Well, in any case I want to think those are references.
All in all, Bloodhunter has typical advantages and disadvantages of a debut album. It sounds brutal and solid and there is a lot of angry energy in it. Seems that musicians really wanted to show all they got and put the main accent on speed and brutality, neglecting everything else. In 2020 reissue there are six bonus tracks – live songs, recorded on March 2019 during Bloodhunter‘s show in Madrid. The band added these tracks to show the difference between where they were in 2014 and where they are now. And the difference is obvious.
Bloodhunter was released on July, 3rd in digital format. Physical copies will be released on September, 4th.
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