Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Blood Of Christ - Demos 1991 - 1993

When I was a kid and wasn't old enough to get into clubs or had an income or an allowance that would facilitate ordering things from Relapse, I would dream about being in Florida or Stockholm or some other hotbed of death metal and getting to go to shows and stuff. Blood Of Christ were in the Relapse catalog and were from Ohio and that made them basically rock stars to me.  I think they had actually broken up before I ever even heard of them.  I didn't actually get to hear any of this material until I won this CDR on eBay.  When I finally heard them, I was pleased to find that Blood Of Christ were as good as I always hoped they would be. It sounds like early 90's death metal.  Heavy, but not tuned to drop A or anything silly like that.  They also do not play at 300 bpm either, which is why I find Nile and Hate Eternal albums completely boring.  "Usual suspects" influences like Morbid Angel, Malevolent Creation and Deicide come to mind, and maybe even a little Rotting Christ-styled bombast in a few places.  Good riffs, good arrangement, good energy. I really like these recordings ALOT and find it pretty criminal that the only true release these guys ever had was their sole "INRI" 7" released in 92, a dribble in the deluge of trend-hopping death metal releases from that year.  Had they released anything, it would have been forgotten among a hundred other releases that didn't sound too different from this stuff, even if it was superior to Deteriorate, Excruciating Pain or Morpheus Descends.

This contains all the material ever recorded by the band and it was prepared for a 2007 memorial concert for the lead singer who died some years back.  According to Encyclopedia Metallum, this is supposed to be released on vinyl someday, but it hasn't happened yet.  In the meantime, you get to download it and spread some early 90's Cleveland death metal gospel.

Blood Of Christ

Tracks 1-4 Taken from 1993 promo tape
Tracks 5-7 Taken from I.N.R.I. 7"
Tracks 8-9 previously unreleased
Tracks 10-14 Taken from 1991 demo

3 comments:

Voluspa9 said...
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Anonymous said...

Could you re-upload this link?

nothingwheel said...

link works fine on my end.