You can't spell "occult" without "cult" and yet the cult status of occult rockers the Devil's Blood felt a little threatened when the group's second full album, 2011's The Thousandfold Epicentre, was up-streamed by specialized label, Ván Records, to the more financially resourceful Metal Blade, resulting in a very un-cult-like media blitz leading up to its release. However, there is no evidence that this taste of the (ahem!) "big time" has done anything to subvert the group's seditious musical agenda, nor in any way blur their proto-metal influences. If anything has changed, it is that the songs of The Thousandfold Epicentre appear to have been birthed, by and large, out of rehearsal room jams, rather than sculpted from the ground up atop recurring melodies and riffs -- then fleshed out with more elaborate arrangements and novel instrumentation, to boot. These accouterments range from something as simple as mirroring electric guitars with acoustic ones across nouveau acid folk-rock numbers like "Die the Death" and "Within the Charnel House of Love," to adding fully orchestrated strings and synthesizers into the transition between the simply named "She" and the ambitious title track. Furthermore, along with familiar samples of infectious, psych-garage-rock such as "On the Wings of Gloria," "Cruel Love" and the surf music/organ-infused "Fire Burning" (which sounds authentically ‘60s). The Thousandfold Epicentre showcases musique concrète-cum-whispered lullaby on "Everlasting Saturnalia"; Mellotron madness-meets-minimalist collage-meets-demonic corruption of the "Peter Gunn" theme on "The Madness of Serpent," and muted instrumentation, eerie sound effects, and soughing vocals that build for 15 minutes toward a shattering finale on the closing "Feverdance" (this one a full-fledged pagan ritual that reaffirms the band's occult mission, by the way). Through it all, singer F. the Mouth of Satan remains the central vortex anchoring the Devil's Blood golden balance between forceful danger and despairing melancholy; so while it's understandable that The Thousandfold Epicentre's broader canvas may require a little more time for digestion than 2009's The Time of No Time Evermore, and certainly 2008's kick-upside-the-head Come Reap EP, there's no shortage of creativity or entertainment to be found here. In other words, both the "cult" and the "occult" of the Devil's Blood lives on...
© Eduardo Rivadavia /TiVo