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Band Name: Through The Eyes of the Dead
Album Name: Bloodlust
Rating: 4 / 5 User Rating: 4.6 / 5
Label: Prosthetic Records
Buy Album: Amazon.com
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Tracklist
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After a warmly received EP and Split released on Lovelost, Through the Eyes of the Dead (TTEOTD) moved to the more prolific Prosethic records (home of Reflux, Byzantine, Caliban) to release their debut long player 'Bloodlust'. TTEOTD are a very hard working 5 piece band, touring extensively in the US with heavyweight bands such as Ion Dissonance, Reflux and All That Remains. Bloodlust welcomes new members Jake Ososkie (Arsis) on bass and Josh Kulick on drums and sees Jamie King (Between the Buried and Me) in charge of production.
The 38min album starts with a short 'grim apocalyptic' soundscape of people screaming which sets the stage for where TTEOTD want to take you. It then launches into the chug-fest that is 'Two inches from the main artery', a track which epitimises TTEOTD's sound. A fierce concoction of melodic death guitar melody, rapid fire 'blastbeat heavy' drumming and harsh vocals (not always death growls but enjoyable none the less) which expertly drops into very satisfying and energy creating hardcore breakdowns. TTEOTD's skill lies in the arrangement of the songs, placing breakdowns in the most energetic and mosh-worthy of places and not overkilling the tracks with aimless melodic noodling. This is the blueprint for all the tracks on the album which makes this a very consistent yet unvaried listen. The last 10 seconds of track 4 sounds very similar to a Converge epic and the end of track 9 goes into Nile territory with an Egyptian sounding melody. My guess is that if you want to listen to a melodic death hardcore album, you want to listen to a similar style all the way through with slight variations on the theme and this offers that in spades.
The trouble is that TTEOTD is in a very crowded sub-genre with many similar bands (e.g. Dead To Fall, Born From Pain, A Perfect Murder, Remembering Never, Full Blown Chaos etc.) occupying the market. TTEOTD is however one of the better bands in the genre due to their cohesiveness and ability to fuse melodic death and hardcore elements with technical proficiency. In terms of technicality, there are many better bands out there (e.g. Ion Dissonance, Cryptopsy, Capharnaum, A Blinding Light) but that's not necessarily a bad thing. If I want to listen to tech-metal I'll listen to those bands but if I want to shake my head with satisfaction, Bloodlust will defiantly do.
It is hard to pick out a highlight track as none stand out but just check out the Nile influenced 'Force Fed Trauma' and the second half of track 7 (a immensely energetic hardcore death metal ruckus). Of the 11 tracks, it is worth noting that there are only 7 full length tracks which are mostly lengthy (5min +).
Overall this a very solid album both in terms of instrumental and song writing ability and very pleasing in terms of brutality (they never drop the pace apart from the short and well timed instrumental interlude on track 6). If you ever get a chance to see this band playing Bloodlust live, I'm guessing it will be an extremely rewarding and fit-inducing experience.
Review by: Camio Miri
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