Search - Chrome :: Blood on the Moon

Outsider rock masterpiece

Mr. P. C. Bougie | thetford,norfolk,U.K. | 04/16/2009

(5 out of 5 stars)

"Blood on the moon was san francisco duo Chrome,s 5th album and their 1st with an outside rythm section brought in.this resulted in a more muscular sound all round, leaving Helios Creed and Damon Edge to concentrate on strafing everything in sight over the churning rhythms thundering along courtesy the Stench Bros.the amazing thing is that this album still sounds amazing now as it did then. there,s just nothing around now which comes close!this album should be played loud, very loud! guaranteed to leave your skull in ruins!"

Mondo Bizarro

Chromefreak | 02/14/2009

(4 out of 5 stars)

"Listening to "Blood on the Moon" is like being trapped in the aural equivalent of D.C. comics' Bizarro World: strange, unpredictable, surreal and nerve-wracking. By the time of "Blood on the Moon," Damon Edge and Helios Creed had refined the Chrome sonic canvas to a metallic sheen, a sound reminiscent of a nuclear power plant going critical. Creed's wildly stochastic leads and Edge's strangely erotic vocals and industrial synth noise fuse with the menacing drone of the Stench Brothers' drum & bass bravado, creating eerie soundscapes for deranged punk mutants and twisted new wave vampires. The opening track, the intensely manic "The Need," delivers an accelerated pulsing rhythm track overwhich Creed's malevolent guitar and Edge's demonic vocal and radioactive synth bursts create an orgasmic climax that is absolutely sexual. "Perfumed Metal" is just as frenetic, with Creed's flanged staccato guitar salvos and Edge's alienated, paranoid vocals creating the perfect mood for demented cyborgs lost in the new dark age of computer dominance and submission. "The Strangers" features some of Edge's creepiest lyrics and one of Creed's nastiest solos ever--like the deathscream of a melting robot. "Brain on Scan" is another standout track, a full metal jacket of shrieking industrialized noise with Edge's echoed voice swirling in the mix like some strange banshee from another world. There are, admittedly, moments of stasis and monotomy that interrupt the album's otherwise savage drive; however, even these tracks work as a kind of repetitive calm before yet another psychic assault on the nervous system. And though not as anarchically brilliant as "Alien Soundtracks" or "Half Machine Lip Moves," "Blood on the Moon" does show Chrome moving toward a more consistently satisfying compromise between arty aural dadaism and punky psychindustrialism--a sound they would more fully realize on their terminal masterpiece "3rd from the Sun.""