The Burial Grounds Sessions

One of the more memorably named black metal bands to come out of the sheer avalanche that is recent USBM, Lake of Blood so far have released four recordings including one album and a split album with Panopticon since their formation in 2007. Without exception so far, all their recordings have tended to be very short and the most recent release "The Burial Grounds Sessions" stops a couple of minutes shy of the 20-minute mark. LoB play a very melodic style of black metal that appears to incorporate post-metal, death metal and doom metal elements. The rhythms are very minimalist black metal in spite of the blast-beat percussion, melodic lead guitar and the switches to slow doomy, near-sludge metal so the band can be considered BM.

The EP could be mistaken for a very long single as it consists of just two tracks. "In Wells of Shadow" is over twice as long as the other track and can be a very changeable song, switching from very slow snail pace to blast-beat speed and back again, and so on. The vocals are far back in the mix and almost seem lost in the reverb thicket that surrounds them. The song constantly shifts from one rhythm to another and instruments can be at variance with each other, the drums going hell-for-leather fast while lead guitar seems very laid-back. It's a very busy track that defies listener expectations all the way to the end. The second track "He Who Becomes" is also very fast and doesn't seem all that different from the previous piece; there's just a lot more screaming.

While the musicianship is good - the drummer especially is energetic and puts everything he has into the songs - the vocals are a let-down, being so washed out by the reverb and the production which throws the focus onto the drums and guitar. The singing doesn't vary much either. The constant change of pace, rhythm and mood in both songs demands a lot of attention and I wonder if the band is trying too hard throwing everything they can think of into the music. The aggression seems a bit forced with the monotonous vocals. Most of all, the music needs its own identity rather than one made from a mishmash of different metal genres - an identity worthy of the band's name, Lake of Blood.