Commanding some blood

(Presse)

Back in 2010 the Bergen-based trio BLOOD COMMAND released their first Full-Length, “Ghostclocks” on Fysisk Format. It was, to make it short, a perfect album. Out of nowhere you got this band mixing Melodic-Hardcore, metallic guitar work together with a disarming pop sensibility and the appeal of the female Lead Vocalist’s wide range howling. Since then, save a couple of tours, the Bergen trio’s only musical activity has been this “Hands us the Alfa Male” EP released last year in both CD and Vinyl.
Compared to the band’s past two EPs, “Party all the Way to the Hospital” and “Five Inch of a Car Accident”, which respectively proposed five and six songs, “Hand us…” is rather short and is composed of only two songs for a total running time of just six minutes. One could guess that the band’s wishes are to keep as much material as possible for their (hopefully) upcoming second Full-Length but still the EP feels way to short and does not manage to properly introduce us to the trio’s new musical direction.
For once the songs appear to be somewhat more violent, heavier and much less colorful than their “Ghostclocks” counterparts. The metallic riffing might still be present in “Summon the Arsonist”, together with some nice synths but the song, despite its dynamism does not hold as well as let’s say, “Alarm All Assassins!”. “Schizophrenic Summer” is itself much different, endowed with slow moshing parts it is most probably BLOOD COMMAND’s most straightforward Hardcore song. If the band’s new Full-Length is in tune with these songs, it’ll surely surprise many a fan, but at this point it is pretty hard to tell.