...And the Blood Runs Black

Summon – And the Blood Runs Black (Moribund Records)
This is a long-running black metal band (and like all “real, true” black metal bands they at one time disbanded only to reunite a few years later, for no damn reason at all), except that they no longer call themselves that. Now they’re “extreme brutal metal”. Whatever. This is great stuff. James Murphy recorded, produced, and mixed the whole thing, and he said he played on some tracks, though I don’t know if his parts made it onto the final product. Therefore, as expected, the sound on this one is fantastic. Everything is clear, the guitars have a nice powerful sound to them, with the typical American black metal “warble”, the bass does disappear a few times, but that’s normal, and the drum sound is the best I’ve heard in a long time. Keyboards are used rather sparingly, and they fit well. The vocals are typical screeched black metal vocals with some growls here and there, but not much range overall. Most of the songs follow the same structure. Their label, by the way, takes the idea of spreading the music of Satan a little too seriously. And they release all the new Meat Shits stuff (those sick, sick motherfuckers).

Tracks:
1) You know how black metal bands have those cheesy instrumental intros that are supposed to set the mood but never work? Well, this one works, and it succeeds in sounding scary.
2) Segue in from the intro with blast beats and speedy riffs. Some of the best, tightest drumming in black metal. Excellent song.
3) Slowed down vocal delivery, but the music is relentless.
4) The intro to this is thrashier, almost Slayer-like, but the rest is pretty standard. The solo also has that Slayer feel to it.
5) This is brutal! It starts out with a piano chord, so it has that epic feel to it, and it carries on sounding like COF would sound if they were a black metal band. Good use of whispered vocals and more solos than the other songs, and they all sound histrionic as all fuck.
6) Short little ditty, sounds pretty unmemorable.
7) Slow, melodic, piano-driven intro, with whispered vox sounding like Type O Negative. It’s actually quite good.
8) More punk sounding than anything else, short and silly, FCCs.
9) Midtro. Piano instrumental. Pointless. Ignore.
10) Overly brutal pounding black metal mayhem that kills kills kills... You get the idea.
11) More of the same, but not boring. FCCs
12) There’s something about the way the staccato riffs and the vocal delivery blend together on this song that grabs me and I like being grabbed. Neat piano-and-double-bass outro.
13) Short and sweet and to the point, if the point is to make you feel like you’ve just had your own leg pulled off and been beaten to a bloody pulp with it...
14) FCCs ruin an otherwise so-so song.
15) Samples, with some deep breathing, laughter, child crying, and possibly back masking (I didn’t bother checking it out). Sounds eerie, but it doesn’t go anywhere.