Yesterday we began a 3-part post about some technically proficient bands we’ve discovered in the last few months who’ve pushed the extreme metal envelope by incorporating some unusual elements into their music.  They’re not well known in the U.S., but we think they’re worth your time. In Part 1, we wrote about a mind-blowing band from Rome called Carnal Rapture. Today our subject is the equally mind-blowing Bloodshedd.

This band from the Phillipines has been making music since 1996 (with a few line-up changes over time), but didn’t release a full-length album until 2007’s Eye of the Pessimist.  Late last year, the band released its second album, Spare No One, on Tower of Doom Records, and it’s an honest-to-god, no-bullshit, jaw-dropper.

For starters, we can say it’s a blending of thrash and death metal, but that really is just the bare beginning. Whatever aural images that conjures in your brains, add to the mix that all of the instrumentalists — Bong Ecat and Bike Buick (since replaced by Darwin Venus) on guitars, MC Santiago on bass, and Toots Book on drums — are technically superb and they play (a) really fast, (b) really tight, and (c) really well. And they’re amazingly inventive.

Jojo Book supplies the vocals, and he’s got the kind of raspy, higher-range shrieking tone that brings to mind Mikael Stanne (Dark Tranquillity) or Tomas Lindberg (At the Gates) — and we don’t drop those names casually. So far, so good — but there’s a helluva lot more.  (read on, after the jump . . .) Continue reading »