Description
Blodsträngen, the third full-length from Gothenburg’s inimitable fourpiece Blessings, begins and ends in the same space: the safety and familiarity of their rehearsal room.
In between these moments however, the album knows no boundaries; it rampages through your inner sanctum, upending everything it can, razing everything you hold dear and drawing on the walls whilst panting, drooling and muttering to itself in strange tongues…
With all four members being veterans of numerous bands and distinct scenes, the sound of Blessings is a cacophony of infuences where nothing is sacred and no idea is thrown out. It should come as no surprise then that Blessings’ debut album, 2012’s Bittervaten is abrasive, crusty and intriguingly in-your-face as the band barely manage to contain the barrage of influences from across the heavy spectrum.
Years of near-constant touring and creative experimentation later came Biskopskniven in 2021; still deafeningly loud and defiantly confrontational, the album brought with it a sense of uneasy patience and seething restraint as the band trimmed the fat and found a new menace in machine-like repetition courtesy of drummer Mattias Rasmusson and synth player/percussionist Erik Skytt.
Blodsträngen, which translates literally as ‘The Bloodline’, is another bracing evolution of Blessings’ truly inimitable sound; pushing the band’s percussive and found-sound textural elements even further to embrace a wild sonic palette that blends modular synths with crushing guitar feedback and even the occasional cowbell.
As such, album opener and lead single ‘Strings of Red’ sets pulses racing with a loping percussive loop before the song abruptly explodes into a double-time thrash-metal dirge with Fredrik Karlsson’s gravel-soaked voice leading the charge and John G. Winther swiftly joining him. Before we know it though, the song turns on its heels again as a nightmarish, prog-like synth motif possesses the song and sends all into a downward spiral of equal parts euphoria and delirium.
Elsewhere, the likes of ‘No Good Things’ pairs the filthiest bass sound you’ve ever heard with a shuffling, playful xylophone-like synth refrain and haunting baritone vocals before collapsing in on itself as underneath colossal guitar riffs and black metal blast beats.
‘Alt Vi Kan Ge Ar Upp’ (All We Can Give Up) is as cutting, angular and cathartic as the song’s title suggests. A relentless ¾ groove all but trips over itself as the growl of guitars builds to breaking point and the track spills into a half-time doom waltz with soaring bittersweet pipe organ melodies and a harrowed vocal lament colliding to briefly create something staggeringly beautiful before crumbling into its separate parts and melting away to nothing…
Overwhelmed yet? Yes? Good. Ready to go again?
Blodsträngen is Blessings fine-tuning their deliberately dissonant sound whilst simultaneously casting their net wide for ever more left-field, experimental influences; a disparate collection of idiosyncrasies that the band somehow manage to pull into something cohesive, captivating and empowering. The band leave the messages and meanings behind their music open to interpretation as a means of sharing this attitude of openness with their audience because, when all is said and done, all that matters is all playing disgustingly loud music together in a room.
FOR FANS OF
Unsane, Breach, Young Widows, Black Flag, Trap Them, Converge, Old Man Gloom, At The Drive In, Swans, The Jesus Lizard
