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Bloodstone – Hour Of The Gate [Compilation]

bloodstone – hour of the gate [compilation]

Info

As every death metal fan from the very first days or any vinyl collector would confirm, old school Swedish death metal is be experienced on vinyl exclusively. But, unfortunately not all great albums have been issued on the holy black wax, especially records released from 1993 and 2000 when vinyl was supposed to be dead and CD was seen as the easiest medium. Easy, perhaps, but there is nothing that gives a better vibe than a good metal record on vinyl. Swedish elitist label Blood Harvest knows how it works and gives all kinds of good releases (both old and new) a much deserved vinyl release…

Together with the massive “Winterlong”-album by colleagues God Macabre this Bloodstone got its vinyl release through the Swedish label. Much deserved, for sure! Bloodstone has been a band that never got the recognition they seemingly deserved, as their sole album combined a lot of interesting ingredients. Not as simple as a lot of their colleagues tend to sound, but still staying true to their roots. Bloodstone combines a lot of black metal to their sound so the result comes like a mixture of an up tempo kind of Nominon/Gorement with hints of early Marduk with slight doomy passages in some songs as well. It might have been the record company that hold them back from getting more attention back in the day when it got released, or maybe the musical climate by then wasn’t the right one. When the scene was flooded by countless pretentious (symphonic) black metal bands Bloodstone did a step back and came with a pure blackened death metal record in the best Swedish tradition. Free from any Dissection-alike melodic cheesy passages it is still quite melodic as some well composed guitar solos makes this album a lot more enjoyable than a lot of the other (overly melodic) albums from Sweden at the time.

The fact that both sides of the vinyl are recorded and mixed in different sessions (here on the vinyl marked as ‘1995-side’ and ‘1994-side’) makes it not always an easy-listening record (the latter one a bit more harsh than the 1995-part), but if you are used to old school metal this shouldn’t be a problem and this album will unfold as a true gem. This is highly recommended for anyone who still can’t get enough of the Swedish buzzsawing guitar sound. It may also be a wise history-lesson for people who are just getting into the (Swedish) death metal/extreme metal scene. This is how things were about a decade ago, raw and dirty. A lot of nowadays bands can learn a lot about how to play heavy and honest extreme metal as it is hard to believe that anyone is actually buying new records of Arch Enemy and such if records like this one exist as well.

Bloodstone

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