Ravencult – Morbid Blood

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It would be easy to listen to Morbid Blood, the second LP by Athens black metal squad Ravencult, and try to read into it some kind of frustration with the Greek financial crisis and its government’s unwillingness or inability to act. Easy, but also inaccurate. Morbid Blood is a ripping, furious album, but it’s firmly rooted in fantastical, hellish imagery, apparently miles from any concern with the problems of the corporeal world. Ravencult’s sound operates somewhere around the crossroads of Swedish satanists Watain and Ohio black n’ rollers Midnight, infinitely more hard-rocking than the former but far less tongue-in-cheek than the latter. In essence, this record manages to make Hell feel both very real and very fun. Opening track Sacrilege of Death introduces the record with a vicious tremolo-picked riff played at approximately a trillion beats per minute, and the album doesn’t let up once after that point. The title track especially finds the perfect balance between pure evil and horns-throwing rock n’ roll, building a four-minute blastbeating black metal anthem around an almost southern-fried riff, all run through the filter of heavy distortion. Mercifully, despite the primordial sounds evoked by the band, the production job is relatively modern. There’s enough grime in it to communicate the darkness in the music, but every instrument and vocal track comes through remarkably cleanly without ever sounding overcompressed. Nothing about Morbid Blood reinvents the wheel, but occultist black n’ roll was hardly a wheel that needed reinventing. What this album does is rock, and harder than much else you’re likely to hear this year.

Written by Brad Sanders
More: 2011, Albums, Black Metal, Quick.Play Reviews, Ravencult