Wednesday night I witnessed the performance of a great new local band called Astral Blood to whom I wanted to draw some attention. The band describes their sound as "esoteric black metal", which is a succinct description as any. Consisting as a trio of Alexander (guitar/vocals), Justin (keyboards), and Andrew (drums), Astral Blood delivers cold, atmospheric black metal as long songs that leave room for plenty of experimentation and variation between dark, ambient passages and ripping, buzzsaw fury. Their lack of a bassist is certainly odd, but it works, and it allows Astral Blood to achieve a sound that isn't so dense as to drown out the music's subtleties.
Wednesday's show supporting Tesseract, Scale The Summit, and Anciients was only their second show as a full band! I spoke with Justin for a few minutes after the show, and Astral Blood expects to release some music soon while getting more live shows under their belts. Go learn more about Astral Blood at their Facebook and Bandcamp pages. If you're curious about their music, here's the audio and video of their last song from Wednesday's show (October 16) available to download. Although the sound is excellent, the quality of the video is, unfortunately, low - that's what happens when you forget to check the recording settings (oops). Anyways, these give you an idea of how this great new band sounds. A list of their upcoming shows follows.
Astral Blood - Audio and video downloads
2013-10-16, Minneapolis, MN, Skyway Theater Studio B
Last song (8:55): mp3@192 kbps (12.25 MB) or mov (346.3 MB)
October 28 - Minneapolis, MN, Memory Lanes, w/Deretla, Invidiosus, We Are Legion
October 31 - Minneapolis, MN, The Terminal Bar, w/Pestifere, Invidiosus, Plagued Insanity
November 3 - Minneapolis, MN, Blue Nile, w/Masshu, LocKGnar, Plagued Insanity, The Progenitors
November 9 - St. Paul, MN, Big V's Saloon, w/Under Eden, Invidiosus, Dissident Clone
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