Quest for Blood

There's no shortage of bands tweaking the black metal formula with avant-garde trickery. Even among the groups willing to push the genre in weird new directions, Quest for Blood stands out immediately. With the band's use of shrieks, vocals that sound more like coyotes howling in the night than human singing, odd chants, jazzy keyboard accompaniment, and its tendency to build a musical attack around the dense improvisational noodling of a session flautist, you won't be mistaking these Japanese weirdos for any of the genre's other innovators.

There are absolutely no other bands you can seek out who will give you anything close to what Quest for Blood offers. You start with a bed of progressive/technical black metal riffing and some drums that mostly take the form of ultra-fast blastbeats. Then add strange keyboard progressions. Most of the keyboard motifs would fit in on a jazzy lounge-pop album, particularly in 'Kosi no Emshiw' and album opener 'Takasago', though they sometimes have a more hurried character like in 'Noise'. But the instrument that does the most talking is a traditional Japanese flute called a nokhan, wielded by session player Yukihiro Isso.

Though the nokhan is the most prominent instrument through most of Quest for Blood's only album, don't chalk this up as a folk metal release. Isso's instrument may be a traditional Japanese flute and he occasionally uses it to render folky rhythms but his playing mainly takes the form of something chaotic, frantic, and aimless, bearing a closer resemblance to the avant-garde stylings of saxophonist Albert Ayler (minus the obnoxious honking) than any Japanese traditionalist. His playing seems to be almost entirely improvised, which lends the music a frenetic quality. Sometimes his noodling is a little too much, particularly in the opening track, which includes a lengthy section of him playing with no accompaniment whatsoever. This must have been a great gig for Isso, who appears to have been allowed to play whatever he wanted over the canvas the other instrumentalists laid out for him but the nokhan playing, though it's satisfying for the most part, could use a little more structure for listeners to cling to.

While I'm complaining about the overprominence of the nokhan, it should also be noted that the guitars are often difficult to pick out, buried as they are beneath Isso's playing and the hyperspeed drumming. The keyboards, though, found the perfect spot in the mix. They're relatively soft in tone but loud enough to be heard and their consistent rhythms lends the album a much needed layer of calm to anchor the music amid the swirling nokhan maelstrom and aggressive metallic rhythm section. Typically the songs are fast and dense, though the pace is often broken up with slower moments, like a capella chanting in 'Takasago', a weird, creeping bass section in 'Purpuke', and some calmer folky playing spread throughout 'Yayema'. Vocals are infrequent and alternate between haunting chants, howls, and shrieks, all of which augment the demented atmosphere Quest for Blood has chosen to deliver.

Quest for Blood's self-titled album is a wonderful display of black metal pushing out against the confines of the genre until it's barely recognizable. In crafting this album, the band thought outside the box in several different ways, crafting an experience that used black metal as a starting point but quickly created an atmosphere of controlled chaos with bizarre vocals, chill, subtle keys, and a mess of spirited nokhan playing. If you decide to enter this funhouse, you may not be able to find your bearings right away but by the time you're done, you'll appreciate your decision to take a chance on this gem of avant-garde metal.