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Lake Of Blood: Heed the primal calling
29/08/08 || theProphet
Color me surprised. I had expected this to be yet another run of the mill black metal act, foolishly sending us their stuff with hopes of praise and glory. Well whaddya know, Lake of Blood is certainly one of the finer acts we’ve got sent to us here at GD, at least of the ones I have gotten the opportunity to review. Now ain’t that something…
LoB hails from the US of A and like some of their countrymen they are very into this whole environmentalist thing, which appears to be the new black in American black metal these days. Nothing wrong with that, nature has always had a big artistic influence which can be seen in the works of people such as William Blake, D.H. Lawrence and Varg Vikernes. I must also stress that Lake of Blood isn’t Wolves In the Throne Room, even though Milkweed Records apparently saw it fit to make that comparison. On “Heed the Primal Calling” we get no such thing as chirping birds, flutes or “nature sounds”. At least not to such an extent that it intrudes on the actual songwriting.
The songwriting, yes. There’s a handful of really good riffs on this one, and actually the best ones are more death metal oriented than they’re smeared with corpsepaint. If LoB wants my advice, they should capitalize on this so that maybe with the next album we’ll see a really solid blackened death metal act. Because fuck knows that “HtPC” shows quite some promise. It should also be noted that LoB manages to sound pretty original, which is rare these days.
The production is deliberately rough, as usual, and it’s all fucking fine. I guess the drums could use a little more tinkering with, though, but at least the bass is pretty well audible. Overall, the soundpicture’s appropriately cold and bleak, and I guess you can hear that the band members were sorta aiming for a foresty sound. Well, mission accomplished.
“Heed the Primal Calling” turned out to be a huge surprise for me, and I might even purchase it. Lake of Blood is a band that has a lot going for them and I recommend that you keep an eye open for future releases. Additionally, the cover of “HtPC” is one of the better ones I’ve seen in quite a long time.
7 lakes of soda out of 10.
- Information
- Released: 2008
- Label: Milkweed Records
- Website: Lake Of Blood MySpace
- Band
- Haagr: vocals
- Nordic: guitar
- Samael: guitar
- Nazalath: drums
- Saffyrion: bass
- Tracklist
- 01. Nameless I Arise
- 02. Heed the Primal Calling
- 03. The Darkest Path
- 04. Lake of Blood
