Roaring from the depths of Dublin’s punk cesspool, Rats Blood have been delivering the goods for months now with feral live shows and unsurprisingly come the release of this eight track demo, the band has committed their ferocity to tape with none of it lost. It can be a worry when a band shows nothing but havoc on a stage that when their first release comes it may not translate as well. Thankfully that’s not the case with Rats Blood’s tape. Of course the rawness of a gig can never truly be matched but these eight songs sure do make a valiant effort.
Unsurprisingly drenched in the most primal recording quality possible, this demo serves up a very brief, very concise hail of raging Japanese influenced hardcore. That said, the fiends of Swedish crust are running wild from the off too with flashes of Wolfbrigade and Disfear to be heard in the urgency of each song’s delivery.
With members of Contort and Putrefaction, and other familiar faces within Dublin’s scene, these eight songs are an adrenaline rush of caustic hardcore punk. The spat vocals are soaked in reverb and come bellowing from the pits of despair along with the cavalcade of riffs and frantic drumming. “Abyss” is a song that really captures all that this band is about with a seething bass line intro that erupts into some d-beat savagery. “Bloodsucker”, the opening number, is nothing short of fucking relentless and “Bottles” just simply pummels.
Rats Blood by AD.AD
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Thematically, Rats Blood are clearly a band that are disillusioned, misanthropic and just plain pissed off with the murky doldrums that Ireland is in right now, with searing diatribes making up the lyrics and harsh but true messages to be found scrawled on the tape’s liner notes about Irish culture and society, the notes on Ireland’s high suicide rate is particularly affecting. This is the kind of anger and aggression that can sometimes be sorely missed.
These ferocious eight songs are utterly abusive primal barrages but to really experience the songs’ true essence you have to see these guys live. The tape is out now on Deathbiter.
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