BLOOD TRIBE – 1369: The Death And Dying Chapters

So what did happen in the year 1369? We are talking about the Middle Ages here. From History, we can learn that in that same year, Charles the 5^th, the king of France, renewed the war against England. In addition, we know that Venice fought against a full-scale invasion by the Hungarians; probably they liked Italian food a lot. Also, the French Bastille was built back then and everyone knows when it was demolished. These events mentioned didn’t take any part in Blood Tribe’s release, 1369: The Death And Dying Chapters and that title remains an enigma. Here is another troubling enigma… what in the world happened with this mediocre effort of an album by this US band, which was highly praised?
Blood Tribe has been around, and obsessed with blood and death, since 2003. They were independent until Dark Harvest Records approached them after the recording of this release.

For all who want to know their debut, Burning Darkness, hit the market in 2005. Their style is somewhere between Modern Thrash Metal, Hardcore and Metalcore. After hearing their new release, new thoughts came to mind like… “Ahh!! What bloody mess is going on here?” Although these guys were able to produce some major attacking riffs, however banal and repetitive several of them can be, the compositions give the weird notion that everything is mixed up (like a bar fight), maybe it was on purpose. This mish-mash, in various songs, will drive you madly insane.

With the availability of a massive production and more than an average skill of handling instruments, the Blood Tribe members forgot that even brutal music such as theirs can be organized into a sort of structure. Because after listening to this one more than a couple of times, one cannot imagine what sort of thoughts and ideas were behind these tunes.

There are two important factors that virtually saved this release from its own chaos… First, there are the riffs. One thing is for sure, the Blood Tribe band knows how to kick some serious ass with riffs of Hardcore and Metalcore. Thrash is there only when it comes to the speedy sections, which were handled by a highly skilled drummer. However, do not expect to be thrashed too much.

Second, the two itsy bitsy speedy solos in “Only Blood” and “End This Vain” inform you that there is still hope out there for the bleeding tribe. Aside from the messy composition writing, there is the vocalist. Through all his babbling nothing is delivered, nothing that any human would take notice off. In order to make sense of the lyrics you will have to read the album’s booklet. In addition, the guy has a nice skill of producing some high pitched screamings. The problem is that if you are doing it just for the kicks, like in most clean vocals acts, it is okay to get the listener’s blood pumping, but if you are singing in a high-pitched growl, don’t you think that someone else is listening and wants to know what is going on? That factor cannot be shadowed even with a double-layered vocal line.

Highlights are hard to come by in this release: The only good song is the opener, “Only Blood”, which is a chop shop, head breaking kick-ass maniac, with a fast and furious solo break. The rest are several parts that will give you a shred of good music like in “Eternal”, where there is a small section of melody from both guitars and bass that reminds of NWOBHM.

Brutal and kicking music is not a bad thing, and even sometimes it helps to rush out tensions. Nevertheless, even brutality has to be done with finesse.