Search - Blood Has Been Shed :: I Dwell on Thoughts of You

Blood Has Been Shed - Kills Nu-Metal Bands Dead!

Telly Gonzalez | New Britain, CT United States | 09/28/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"A word of warning: anyone looking for cheap pop-punk or the latest trendy mall metal is strongly advised to avoid this record and this band at all costs. Granby, CT's Blood Has Been Shed is the kind of band favored by those who think Hatebreed AREN'T ANGRY ENOUGH. Their self-financed and originally self-distroed debut is the most intentionally painful half-hour of anger and outrage to see release, composed of seven blistering chronicles of humanity at its all-out worst.Starting with the opera vocals of "From the Outside," BHBS proceeds to wield guitar distortion and possibly the dirtiest mixdown in hardcore history to escort the listener through an exhibit of atrocities great and minor. Vocalist Howard Jones (who also lends throat to Killswitch Engage these days) bellows acid-penned lyrics with the vengefulness of a man who just heard that his children were murdered. The album's strong points are during the midpoint of the action. "Purify" constantly amazes with in-your-face riff arrangements that make this as close to safe ground as this album gets. That sense of safety ends once you get past the news soundbytes that start off "Mediocrity Syndrome." (I will not fall victim to a system / that holds down the truth./ A fine oiled machine that deserves to rust and die.) And then comes "Willful Ignorance," the high point of the album. A first-person spoken word that begins 30 seconds back from the start of track 6 leaves the listener dumbfounded and shaken from the moorings, setting up for the sonic bloodbath to come. The results are not pretty.In closing, this album is not for the trendy or the culturally vapid. It's angry (sometimes to the point of sounding high-horsed), ugly (you WILL need to read the lyrics to understand what Howard is saying) and sometimes disturbing (see: the "You raped me" intro to "willful Ignorance"); but compared to the cartoonishly glossy dreck that passes off for metal these days, it's as much an improvement as it is a reality. The world is an ugly place where easy answers are useless and that our children are often ill-prepared for. I Dwell on Thoughts of You doesn't pretend to offer any answers, let alone easy ones. All it does is open people's eyes to reality. And that in the end is what our children need and what Nu-metal and pop-punk can never offer."