Gas, Flames, Bones

After finally seeing Blood live, and being blown away by what I'd consider to be one of the best extreme metal shows I've ever witnessed, I think it's the best time to discuss in detail why I've always held these German wacks in such a high regard - considering them to be pretty much the best grindcore band of all time. I remember, during the earlier part of my adolescence, holding Carcass' "Reek of Putrefaction" as my all-time favorite grind album, being enamored with its inhuman putridity and insane riff galore, believing nothing could ever top it. Then, around the age of seventeen, I ran across Blood for the first time, hearing the track "Ebola", and of course I was floored: no grindcore band I knew up until then had ever sounded this violent, this powerful, this nasty, this wretched in spite of its extreme minimalism and streamlined presentation. Not too long after, I dove deep into Blood's discography, discovering and falling in love with the haunting, morbid extremity of works such as "O agios pethane" and "Christbait". But the album that really took the cake for me was the one featuring the track that made me a convert in the first place - an album that was even able to surpass what, up until that point, I'd consider to be the artistic peak of the genre. "Reek of Putrefaction" was not my favorite grindcore record anymore: "Gas. Flames. Bones." was.

I wonder why this album gets overlooked so often, even by Blood fans and by the band themselves. To me it's easily Blood's most violent, intense, consistent, all-encompassing work, yet it's probably also their least talked about, generally relegated to a mere footnote in their discography (especially since vocalist Martin Witchskinner rejoined the band, with live shows shifting their focus back to the first three records as a consequence of that). "Gas. Flames. Bones." is an abrupt departure from the formula of previous albums such as "Mental Conflicts" and "Depraved Goddess", which bore an overall lighter, less busy, more punk-laden approach featuring less intense riffs, more minimalistic songwriting and a generally more relaxed pace to the songs: on the contrary, this is probably Blood's grittiest, fiercest, overall busiest offering - cramming an insane amount of riffs in generally shorter amounts of space, with a stunning newfound sensibility, eloquence and dynamism in the songwriting department, in stark contrast to the relatively static songwriting of previous two works; this restless urgency is further aggravated by a rather severe, solemn atmosphere that's instantly established by the intro track, setting the mood for the album right at the start with a sample from Carl Orff's "Carmina Burana" (which, to be fair, was already featured on a track from "Depraved Goddess"), later joined by drums, bass and guitars accenting it and giving it a new level of gravitas and epic drama.

And fuck me if the album doesn't deliver on that, with the following nineteen tracks. This is Blood turned up to eleven in any conceivable regard: "Gas. Flames. Bones." blends the robust, choppy yet intensely atmospheric riffage heard on "Christbait", "O agios pethane" and (to a degree) "Mental Conflicts" with the merciless nonstop blasting of "Impulse to Destroy", all that with an added level of vehemence the band hadn't quite shown before. If "O agios pethane" just dared to gaze into the abyss of human depravity, "Gas. Flames. Bones." takes you straight into the slaughterhouse and smashes your skull with the most downright evil, pitch-black negative riffage the band has ever delivered in their career (enhanced by the grimy, sludgy guitar tone, both obesely heavy in the lower/mid frequencies and annoyingly buzzy in the highs), while Ventilator blasts restlessly and Clausi spews his hatred right into the mic. By the way, about Clausi's vocals: he's no Martin (whose performance on "Impulse to Destroy" remains one of a kind), but I find his role in carrying the band during the "Mental Conflicts"/"Dysangelium" era to be quite underrated. His ogre-like growls, while nothing revolutionary, always manage to sound notably expressive in spite of their - by nature - limited range: they're angry, mean-spirited and filled with utter hatred and contempt, at times tastefully emphasized by the occasional high rasps placed as backing vocals (which sound as devilish and sinister as they can ever get in grindcore), and it always feels like the guy is giving all he's got, never phoning it in - especially during the more relentless tracks such as "Mankind", whose chorus you're never going to forget once you've heard it.

The best word to describe Blood's trademark riffing would be tasty: at least, that's the feeling it always gave me. Bands like Depression and Rot have tried to replicate this style, but no one can quite pull it off as good as the originals (even though Rot's latest record is definitely the best attempt I've heard so far). Blood takes the fat, simple, straight-to-the-point riffing of death/grind staples like Terrorizer and improves upon it, giving it more depth, three-dimensionality and overall memorability. As a general rule, Blood riffs are some of the catchiest you're ever going to hear in grindcore: whether they're long-winded tremolos or ultra-minimal three-chord affairs, they're always granted to remain stuck in your head, and the band is always sure to develop and milk their already catchy motifs to the highest extent as far as the old school grind formula can go. A track like "Woundead", for instance, feels like a masterclass in extreme musical minimalism, showing how to indulge in just a few notes per song while still crafting and developing a theme that feels rich and dynamic, in a way that feels worthy of raw black metal champions such as Darkthrone, Von, Ildjarn and Profanatica. As a result, these tracks feel heavy and weighty but ultimately sweet and satisfying, pretty much the feeling you get when eating a fuckton of chocolate if you get what I mean - and well, "Gas. Flames. Bones." is without a doubt the one Blood album that's going to give you an indigestion.

First of all, you're gonna hear the most memorably wicked tremolo riffs the band has ever written on tracks such as "Screaming With No Face", "Perishment in Utter Ecstasy", "FH-70mm", "Serial Infanticide" and "Positional Warfare". Songs are also filled with tons of open-chord punky riffage, which was already making a significant comeback in Blood's sound by the times of "Depraved Goddess". Aside from your usual d-beat up-tempos in the vein of "Flames and Gas" or "Multiglobalised Fallacy", I also find worth noting that this is probably the Blood album with the most amount of pure, unadulterated grindcore minimalism since the times of "Impulse to Destroy", as it's immediately apparent by hearing tracks such as the rather lo-fi "Holy Rot": streams of quasi-atonal early Napalm Death power chords abound all throughout the record - and yet, even during those seemingly inarticulate sections, Blood's mature, distinct, well thought-out songwriting formula is still preserved, if not even emphasized to a higher degree; the main motifs of tracks like "Ebola" are built around two or three power chords - and yet they feel more "alive" and with more things to say than most prog discographies ever will, possessing such a distinct, unmistakable identity that it sounds unreal when you hear it. Despite this relatively high amount of stripped down punky minimalism, however, the more rigid, percussive approach developed between "Christbait" and "Mental Conflicts" in the form of choppier, chuggier riffage still plays an important role on numerous pieces such as "Auto Cannibalism", "Defaced Total Mutation" and "Fleshconsumer", at times even intertwining with the whirly grindcore riffs (see: "Derangement") in a dynamic, ever-changing stream of violence that never lets you off the hook and never gives you a chance to catch your breath, in a way that seems unthinkable for such an old school, minimalistic grind record. "Gas. Flames. Bones." manages to accomplish the kind of mature, narrative approach to grindcore songwriting that records like "Reek of Putrefaction" needed twice the amount of riffs to properly convey, and that's the album's secret strength in a nutshell.

And I still haven't talked about what happens when the songs slow down. Ohhh, boy: I've never been more happy to hear a grindcore record slow down than on "Gas. Flames. Bones." - and that's saying a lot, considering how much I've just praised the album's blasting sections. If you're familiar with famous Blood tunes such as "Spasmo Paralytic Dreams", you know how infectious their chugging mid-tempos can be - and on this album, this formula reaches its peak on "Der Henker", whose main riff is one you can't truly forget, and the grinding double-bass mid-paced attacks of "Hecatomb". Staying true to Blood's tried-and-true formula since the first album, songs like "Screaming With No Face", "Derangement" and "Serial Infanticide" feature some chugging mid-paced breaks which only serve to add some dynamism and make later blasting sections feel even more impactful. And yet, this particular Blood album adds an even more interesting ingredient to the mix: the second halves of tracks such as "Auto Cannibalism" and "Der Henker" feature some open-chord pauses/slowdowns with a rather martial, solemn rhythmic cadence that makes them feel more akin to black metal than anything death metal or grindcore-related. During these slower parts, the riffs are sludgier, more minimalistic and more dripping with misanthropic malevolence than anywhere else on the record - and these slow, almost black-ish interludes later morph into more apocalyptic, minimalistic grindcore blasting with such an intuitive naturalness that speaks volumes about this band's musical intelligence. I've heard Blood being associated multiple times with black metal despite their surface musical attributes sounding nothing like it: after all, many of their smaller gigs (like the one I attended last weekend) tend to revolve around a predominantly black/death-oriented bill, closer to the war metal scene than to the grindcore one - and let's also not forget that the band themselves used to wear some haphazardly-made corpsepaint on stage around the times of "O agios pethane" and "Mental Conflicts". However, to me this connection has never been more apparent than on "Gas. Flames. Bones.", especially during its slower portions: closing track "Positional Warfare" is a perfect way to wrap things up by emphasizing, through its rather epic construction and morbid use of melody, the album's evil, depraved nature that sounds more akin to Blasphemy or Goatpenis than Napalm Death or Repulsion in spirit.

Hey, wait a minute - all this chit-chat about guitar riffs and atmosphere has diverted me from discussing one of the most defining elements of this record and Blood as a whole: Ventilator's INSANE drumming. I can't really imagine this band without him: this is one of those cases, along with Cryptopsy and a few others, where the concept of the drummer being the engine of a band ascends to a whole new level of meaning. If you've read some of my past reviews about cult underground releases from the 80's, you might be aware of my slight preference for more old school, primitive forms of blasting - more chaotic and directly related to the thrash beat archetype. However, as far as proper extreme metal blast-beats go, Ventilator has always been among my favorites interpreters of the style. He's not a particularly fast drummer by current standards (although he was clearly ahead of the curve back in 1989), but nevertheless, he's often able to make his performance feel faster than it really is, through the sheer intensity of his playing: unlike many trigger-reliant extreme metal drummers of today (and seemingly keeping faith to D.D. Crazy's style), he never speeds up at the expense of hitting his drumkit with the reasonable amount of strength, and that makes his faster sections all the more impactful and significant. I swear his playing is ten times more stunning and jaw-dropping when heard live, but the albums where the ridiculous intensity of his drumming is more immediately apparent are "Impulse to Destroy" and "Gas. Flames. Bones." - the latter benefitting from ten more years of technical advancement, put at the service of a more lethally precise performance that truly leaves no survivors. Starting right from "Screaming With No Face", you're run over by a never-ending flood of blast-beats, overwhelming your senses like on no other Blood album ever. I generally tend to enjoy my grindcore with sloppier, less precise drumming (see: Mick Harris' crashing, mayhemic wall of sound on Napalm Death's first two records) - but this is one of those cases where technical precision, being implemented into such an overall intense musical framework, does truly benefit the music, instead of making it more streamlined and boring as it sadly is often the case.

The mix between "Gas. Flames. Bones."'s hyperactive songwriting and relentlessly fast drumming does really constitute what you'd call an explosive cocktail: Ventilator never sits on a beat for too long, switching between steamrolling blast-beats, restless d-beats and massive, grinding mid-tempos. Aside from the usual modern grind blasting, he even digs up some of those older, more primitive proto-blast skank beats that used to be very popular back in the late 80's and could still be heard at times on "Impulse to Destroy" (see: "Foulmouthed Politicians") on tracks such as "Serial Infanticide" or even the verse sections from "Flames and Gas". But the thing that sends me on the moon when it comes to Ventilator's drumming is the mercilessly precise violence of his breaks: really, this guy took grindcore's typical drum break and turned it into a mind-blowing art form. Past examples of that could be found on songs such as "Cannibal Ritual" (which I had the pleasure to hear live), but my favorite example ever can be found right on this album, more specifically on "Flames and Gas", which ends in a reckless blastfest accented by some of the sharpest, most precise drum breaks I've ever heard, getting more and more intense each time they repeat until the end of the song. This is another testament to Blood's unbelievable songwriting prowess, even concerning the tiniest, seemingly most trivial details.

I didn't plan for this review to be this long, but well, it seems like you can never give this album enough praise. "Gas. Flames. Bones." remains to this day my favorite work in the entire grindcore genre - a vibrant, inspired, splendidly crafted synthesis of all its best attributes (in a similar way to Vomitory's "Blood Rapture" for death metal), and I can't imagine anything possibly topping it. Could Mortician be counted as reasonable contenders? Well - they do possess a huge, undeniable grindcore baggage in their sound (further testified by their Napalm Death and Repulsion covers), but their thuggy musical approach is overall much more akin to your typical 90's NY brutal death act than any pre-2000 grindcore band; Blood on the other hand is pure old school death/grind, and no one does it better than they do on this record. Even though I was blown away by the live renditions of their earlier, more classic albums, I still wish the band would cover at least a handful of tracks from this criminally overlooked masterpiece I encourage any grindcore fan (both old school and modern) to check out. It's an album so violent, deranged, gritty and genuinely evil that it could truly have come out of the Nazi camps depicted on its cover.