With Blood Comes Cleansing – Horror

• 5th Feb 2008

When heavy music was in its infancy, bands like Sabbath & Maiden would have never believed that the music they made to bring fear and scare it’s audience would have had such longevity-but it has, that it would spawn a Christian offspring in a genre obsessed with old nick-but it did :and now that Christian metal-or indeed metal core has carved its own niche, that a band would openly use sections of the bible within it’s lyrics-but With blood comes cleansing have done just that.

Originally causing a stir with Golgotha, ‘Horror’ represents metal/death core heavily based around faith-complete with biblical scripture and thought proving rhetoric’s, with every song (Except ‘horror‘) quoting from the bible-particularly Revelations.

The overriding question of any musical excursion is it’s validity within itself-is the song any good? – The message can be culturally relevant and indeed of high moral value, but it’s all for nought if the song doesn’t seize you.

In parts as complicated as a thousand unfinished Rubik’s cubes, and similarly as tough and uncompromising, it’s with ‘lash upon lash’ that WBCC veer from a predictable path hinted at by ‘Hematidrosis’ and become something more engaging , gripping you by the throat until your ears follow.

At times vocalist Dean Atkinson seems to lack clarity, but such is the way when you perform the musical equivalent of sandpapering your larynx every time you sing- the coarse and lower tone Atkinson uses seems to fit better with the music beneath and when he switches between the higher pitches to the low it clicks and flows better.

‘Filthy stains’ proves a welcome tempo change ,if only for a brief respite and within that raises the issue of pacing within the album as it should have appeared earlier to avoid the assault and subsequent blending of ideas that get lost in the attack.

For every failure there are several successes and the album feels like an assault by a group of madman with axes, hell bent on your complete dismemberment, closer to Three inches of blood in its dungeon metal prose it summons up images of massive mosh pits of orcs listening to it before going into battle.

The excellent crushing riff within ‘Eternal reign’ effectively sees the band deconstruct their sound with a circular saw and rebuilding it into a much stronger entity.

This may sound as though its belittling the subject matter or the way it’s executed-that there’s and element of comedy to it-but that isn’t the case-simply that what response WBCC want to elicit isn’t completely achieved-that the lyrics fail to come to the fore.

‘Horror’ has some strong moments-whether the lyrics will appeal to you is entirely subjective and personal-as is music: but in order to completely achieve their goals With blood comes cleansing need to capitalize on the strong standard material here and add to the Christian metal genre with songs that are above simply solid and closer to exemplary, only then will the essence of their message come through.

Mark cooper.