In a country who’s biggest musical export is black metal, Norway’s Blood Command make for strange bedfellows. Self-described purveyors of “death pop”, this Bergen quintet deliver a sound that’s both heavy and lithe, an angle they’ve taken to extremes on album number five, World Domination. This crew deliver a sound that’s punky, yet groove laden, and while the revolution might not be televised, Blood Command ensure you’ll be able to dance to it!
Featuring an impressive 20 tracks (count ‘em!) World Domination comes out swinging with opening blast ‘The Band With The Three Stripes’. It’s a ferocious blast of punk, and one which leaves the listener sandblasted in its slipstream, but hold onto your hats because ‘Heaven’s Hate’ follows hot on its heels to land the knockout blow. The brevity of many of these songs, and the rapidity with which they are delivered, makes for an intense experience, and you might feel battered, bruised and slightly concussed (but in the best way) long before the album’s finished, but punk was never meant to be cute or pretty and you knew that on paying admission.
Since joining the band in 2020, vocalist Nikki Brumen (formerly of Aussie blackened metallers Pagan) has made the mic her own and delivers a wonderfully throaty rasp like a mischievous imp. Yet, it would be unfair to single out any one member of Blood Command, because the band lock in tightly to deliver a technicolour brand of punk that really does know no limits. You get the feeling that there’s no boundaries to constrain this group, and subsequently they’re not afraid throw in blastbeats amidst disco grooves and techy elements next to the plundering of rave culture, and if you think the twain can never meet, then you really need to listed to World Domination.
There’s a constant evolution on this record that ensures things never become staid, and while no two songs inhabit the same sonic space, World Domination is united by its very eclecticism. Yet, you could pull any song from the twenty, be it the ambient ‘Decades’ or the hardcore blast of ‘Reap What You So’ and it’d be easily identifiable as Blood Command. There’s no respect for rock’s lineage here, and when the songs are this good, why should their be, and in an age where things tend to veer towards the generic, this is a truly original listen.
- World Domination is released via Hassle Records on 29th September 2023.
Track List:
- The Band With The Three Stripes
- Heaven’s Hate
- Valley Of Hinnom
- Forever Soldiers Of Esther
- Stay Awake
- Bare Witness
- The Plague On Both Your Houses
- …In The Shadow Of Deaf
- Welcome To The Next Level Above Human
- It’s Not Us, It’s Them
- Hate Us Cause They Ain’t Us
- Keep My Seat Warm
- Burn Again
- Decades
- Reap What You Sow
- Blue North
- Holy Unblack
- World Domination
- Losing Faith
- Tetragram
