Five albums in, it’s something of an insult to refer to Norwegian “deathpop” group Blood Command as merely reliable. Sure, every album has been some shade of brilliant. Yes, they’ve retained their unique sound – that of careering hardcore, savage metallic riffing and sherbet-sweet pop melodies all congealed into one lovely, gooey sonic soup – despite numerous line-up changes.
But even so, Blood Command are so much better than many give them credit for. Once again, World Domination is a fantastically exciting listen, with the band stretching themselves into oddly eccentric shapes while resolutely keeping their core sound intact.
On paper, the parping brass, extreme metal crunch and nursery rhyme melody of The Plague On Both Your Houses shouldn’t work, but Blood Command make combining those elements feel like the most natural thing in the world. This time around they’ve added techno, as on Welcome To The Next Level Above Human, jiggy gangsta rap on the gloriously over the top Burn Again, and brevity to their already overflowing melting pot.
Eight of the 20 tracks on the album clock in on or below the one-minute mark. Somehow, this scattershot approach to making music has once again yielded a cohesive and intoxicating listen. Maybe it’s because Blood Command are such undeniably great songwriters.
Take a listen to the marshmallowy, pure heartbreak, electropop of Decades and try to deny that it wasn’t created by people with an innate understanding of what makes all the genres they borrow from work. The fact that it’s immediately followed up by an awesome 36-second-long powerviolence song called Reap What You Sow is Blood Command in a nutshell: no boundaries, no borders, no respect for genre conventions or pigeonholes. This is a band and an album that’s almost impossible to second guess. That’s more than reliable – that’s essential.
World Domination is out September 29 via Hassle
