Blood Tsunami at Myspace

Blood Tsunami’s sophomore effort is caught between two extremes. On one hand, the songwriting  is perfectly fine; they know how to write good riffs and the musicianship is excellent. The only truly poorly-written song in my opinion was the 13-minute instrumental Eceladus Rising, which has some good parts but just felt aimless overall. Unfortunately, the guitars just aren’t heavy enough for this material to work fully; for most of the album, there’s a distinct lack of the oomph that thrash metal needs to succeed. Instead of playing their songs in a brutally heavy style, the guitarists just glide along like a poorly animated CGI monster that’s far too agile for its size; there’s little sense of weight to these songs, however well constructed they are.

Compounding the problem is that the vocalist sings in a style that suits death metal more than Blood Tsunami’s brand of melo-thrash (and the backing vocals are even harsher). The contrast between the relatively light, melodic riffs and the growling vocals hurts the material greatly. That said, Grand Feast of Vultures is far from being a horrible album; it’s tightly played and never bogs down in repetition. It’s just that its limitations are highly disappointing and could be easily remedied.

Saturday, May 16th, 2009 @ 11:44 pm Thrash Metal
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