Blood Revolt | ‘Indoctrine’

A week on from Raoul Moat’s one man war on the police, it feels somewhat strange to be reviewing a record that tells the story of a one man war on society as a whole.

Indeed, if ever there was a moment where a record has seemed like a rebuttal to the popularly held belief that metal is a socially irrelevant escapist medium, this is it. Documenting a man’s descent into self imposed martyrdom by way of religious fanaticism, paranoia and desperation, it announces itself with a hushed prayer and a hail of bullets, and ends in tragedy.

The dilemma at the core of the story is summed up on album highlight “My Name In Blood Across the Sky” when over a despondent funeral parade of a riff, vocalist Alan Averill emotes our hero’s self internal struggles thus:

“When the demons come for you, do you fight them / or do you become one of them?”

The initial “what the fuck?” response that the appearance of the track “Year Zero” caused online a few months back may have dissipated with the public airing of two other album tracks, but the posting of these samples was perhaps more of a chance to get people used to the somewhat atypical vocal approach.

While those previews were cetainly key to providing a chance to allow us all to adjust to the sound, they really didn’t provide anything like the whole picture. This is far more ambitious than some mere vanity project. It’s a monster, where the elements coalesce into something truly staggering.

At a purely instrumental level, Blood Revolt are pretty much a death metal band. I’m not open to discussion on this, I’m just outright telling you, and if vocals were being handled by, say, Pete Helmkemp, none of us would be debating it. Put aside the vocals, and the murk encrusted full speed ahead attack that makes up much of the record puts one in mind of some mutant offspring of Slaughter Lord and Nasum.

That’s not all of course, there are moments of punk bounce, forlorn dirge, and even a brief  hint of classic metal burst through in a chorus on the closing “Martyr’s Brigade”.

The raw (under) production compliments the music perfectly. In short,before we get into the more esoteric elements, at the end of the day “Indoctrine” is fucking blazing, headbang inducing assault of an album.

The real innovation on display here isn’t simply that some clean vocals have been whacked on top of the kind of tuneage that would normally just be served by some rudimentary grunting - it’s how the music itself is given a whole new context by the vocal delivery, and by extension becomes important in the unfolding of the character’s story.

Blast beats suddenly feel like they’re being used to add a sense of movement to the plot,  to capture the burst of desperation and violence in sections of the lyrics, to indicate the adrenaline-filled maelstrom his life is becoming.

Slower sections are there to highlight his doubt and helplessness. The sudden shifts in tempos and moods is as schizophrenic as our hero himself. It becomes impossible to seperate the music, the story and the story teller and see how any one of these would function - or indeed if they would function - alone.

That sense of “Indoctrine” emerging as a fully formed entity rather than the sum of its’ parts is truly why I think it’s such an important record. Frivolous as it may sound, this has been put together in a way that lends it a cinematic sensibility.

There’s really no way around it here, Averill is very much the star of the show, and his performance was always going to make or break this album. Ultimately, if you’re not a fan his voice, you’re probably already going to be biased against the record - your loss.

In his roll as narrator here AA draws liberally on his inner thespian in a way that suggests should this whole music thing not work out for him, perhaps a career doing Shakespeare around the country might suit him. Rather than just sing about the character in this tale, he becomes the character and breathes life and genuine emotion into every line.

In harsher moments, when the black metal rasp in employed, he sounds more full of venom than ever - check out the start of “Bite The Hand, Purge The Flesh” for what possibly  must be the most aggravated delivery of the word “fucking” ever recorded. In addition to this and his more familiar forceful melodic vocal style, he switches up between spoken word, emotive pleading and whatever other style a line demands seamlessly.

It’s not entirely without flaws. At times (particularly on opener “Salvation At The Barrell Of A Gun”) the reins slip a little and it feels like the vocals are lagging behind during the faster sections. Also, as much of a force of nature as he is, J Read could possibly do with looking up the word “subtlety” in the dictionary - as in some of the slower sections he seems to compensate for not being allowed to blast by throwing in drumfills that trample over the mood a little.

The biggest potential problem Blood Revolt face however, is not one with this album - it’s the daunting task of where to go next. So many questions come out of this record - the main one being whether or not people will take the time to embrace the conceptual album of the lyrics and artwork, or if it will just be listened to purely just because of the musical brutality.

Furthermore, how will this be presented live? As fantastic an extreme metal record it is musically, it would be a mistake to neglect the lyrical aspect in the live arena - but how best to present this aspect isn’t immediately clear. Similarly, can they follow up such a striking debut? Only time can tell.

“Indoctrine” could have been a disaster on so many levels. Perhaps to some underground purists, it already is, as I expect. But to my mind, this fearless record is a small milestone for what is possible within the context of making raw underground metal as a genuine artistic statement rather than just as some sort of explosion of sonic testosterone. “Indoctrine” is that rarest of things - a death/black metal record for grown ups.

They aren’t kidding when they say it in the press release- this is absolute, and there is nowhere to hide.

4.5/5 - Jamie Grimes ::: 19/07/10