No Spill Blood — Eye of Night

[Svart Records — 2023]★★★★★

Reviewed 21 February 2023by Colin Lang

There are crossovers that have little to do with designs on commercial success; or, at least, that is not their point of departure. Dublin's No Spill Blood is a case in point, bringing together a cross-pollinated mixture of seemingly incongruous musical heritages – dark metal, synth-driven Kraut, and groove-heavy thrash. The instruments consist of electric bass, synths, and old-fashioned drums, none of which is reinventing the wheel, but in their precise and studied collaboration, new possibilities appear on the horizon. In lieu of the higher frequencies registered by the guitar, No Spill Blood's synths carve out a field between noise and microtonal textures, freeing the rhythm section to move to the sonic foreground of the mix.

Eye of Night is remarkable for this subtle shift in perspective (background to foreground), but even more for the subtle gradients of attack that follow from it. "Anvil Crawler" is a hard-hitting beast, full of fury, while the proceeding track, "Ad Ugeum" is a pretty groovy affair, slowed down, almost metronomic, somewhere between Tago Mago-era Can and early 2000s Melvins. There is an undeniable element of force in all of the pieces that make up Eye of Night, which guides an otherwise heterogeneous mixture of voices. Overall, the album's post-production must have been an unwieldy beast of its own, stewarded by Phil Manley, whose own work in all of the represented genres is worth mentioning.

For fans of Kraut, Doom, and the darker reaches of electronic composition, and perhaps for those who have yet to pick a camp and might just be fine right where they are – on the fence. Highly recommended!