Bloodcross Archives - NO CLEAN SINGING

(written by Islander)

Continuing on with my plan to group songs in most of the remaining installments of this list in ways that make sense to me, today’s Part 15 includes three tracks from three very good 2024 albums that are highly propulsive, and all of them would fit into my weekly SHADES OF BLACK column, even though the last band is usually classified as death metal.

Also, all three album covers gives places of prominence to… skeletons.

The albums that house these songs are also records from which I easily could have picked different tracks for the list, which is one reason (among others) why they were so good. So I won’t be surprised if any of you would have made other picks; on a different day, I might have too.

To explore the songs in the previous 14 Parts of the list, use this link. Continue reading »

We managed to overlook Abyssal Blood, the first demo of the Finnish heavy metal band Bloodcross, when it landed in 2021. And so their debut album Gravebound is hitting us like an enormous surprise. Maybe that’s for the best, because with Gravebound it feels like Bloodcross have musically found their best selves, with results that really are astonishing.

Whereas Metal-Archives stuck the simple “Black Metal” label on Bloodcross based on that demo, even then it really didn’t completely capture what Bloodcross were doing (something like “blackened melodic thrash” would have been more informative.) But with Gravebound they have more extravagantly and elaborately branched out, not totally forsaking the influence of such bands as Dissection and Necrophobic, but more prominently bringing into play elements of power metal, speed metal, and (for want of a better term) “classic” heavy metal. Continue reading »

OUR LIST OF 2024’S MOST INFECTIOUS EXTREME METAL SONGS (PART 15): KANONENFIEBER, BLOODCROSS, DARKENED

AN NCS PREMIERE: BLOODCROSS — “GRAVEBOUND”