ninehertz

A year on from their debut introduction, Blunt Knife Castration are back with another full-length album, a band with a healthy creative urge. As on last February’s Live Fast Die Slow, they’re a bristling ball of aggression channelled through sludge, doom and a touch of death metal.

Blood & Oil displays clear progression. While there are some clear nods to UK staples, such as to early Raging Speedhorn on Degeneration, and other tracks where they hold a bullish, mid-tempo sludge line (which is no bad thing in itself), there are signs of digression from the mean, particularly the longer the album goes.

There you find variation through everything from stoner rock riffs to Pig Destroyer’s intensity to the cross-genre breeding of Soilent Green. They deploy samples well (Swallow’s commentary on the US opioid crisis a case in point) and changes in the vocals bring something new, such as on the spoken word over the general discordance of the title track.

There’s a couple of tracks near its end where they pull back the pace, replacing the bludgeon of their core with a prowling menace. The album may not be perfect, but in these moments their upward trajectory is clear, and it was here I was most intrigued. This is a band on the rise, growing in confidence.