Metal Underground.com

The Devil’s Blood is the kind of band that comes around once in a decade. To have the ability to sound like everything you have ever heard in the span of your lifetime and yet again like nothing you've ever heard before is a unique quality in a band. The Devil’s Blood - the band - is just as peculiar, kind of like “a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma”….or was that “a mystery, broken into a jigsaw puzzle, wrapped in a conundrum and hidden in a Chinese box?” To call it stoner/doom is unfair. To call it rock is too broad. However, in terms of “heaviness,” the only thing heavy about “The Thousandfold Epicentre” is a dark and evil presence. With a singer known only as “SL/TDB/A-O,” perhaps you can agree.

There are times on “The Thousandfold Epicentre” where you swear this is the long lost Fleetwood Mac album (“Die the Death”). At other times, it is the female fronted version of Pink Floyd (“Everlasting Saturnalia” and the epic 15 minute “Feverdance”) or The Doors (“Fire Burning”). Then again, there is an occasional riff that sounds like an inverted version of Judas Priest’s “Heading Out to the Highway” (check out “Cruel Lover”). The style is a mind boggling array of influences that dulls the senses and makes the listener susceptible to receive “the devil’s blood.”

With that said, this isn't just the psychedelic visions of spinning flowers and tie dye animation you might expect from a band so obviously influenced by the ‘60’s and ’70’s. It is a “tie die” vat of human blood pouring over your mind, as underneath all the subtlety lays an ancient and eerie presence which is just too damn evil. Sure, you may feel all safe and warm wrapped in the blanket of surreal melancholy and earthly driven tones, but as your mind drifts away on this musical acid trip, the band chants incantations to bewitch your spirit and swallow your soul. So run from the light kiddies!

In actuality, the band equates damnation and Satan to spiritual freedom from organized religion and humanity. According to SL/TDB/A-O, The Devil’s Blood is “quite simply not of this world and holds no ties to it.” Whether or not I fully agree with that analogy is irrelevant and futile, as after being lulled into the safety of this sonic mystery trip, my ability to oppose is greatly diminished!