Until recently, Blodet were a six piece band, unfortunately losing their brother and guitarist Rickie Östlund to a hard battle with cancer during the writing process of new album Death Mother. This left the rest of the band with the incredibly difficult task of finishing the album without him to help with their grieving process and honour their fallen member. Continuing to follow the path initially laid out by their 2018 and 2021 EP’s, Kristallpalatset and Vision respectively, Blodet have been likened to eerie discomfort of SWANS paired with the noisy, experimental nature of Sonic Youth, with nods towards Cult of Luna and Chelsea Wolfe for good measure.
Opening with the title track and lead single, a drumstick count-in echoes in a large space and lavish, atmospheric tremolo melodies on the guitars give way to a somber groove. Dennis Fahlgren’s bass drones deliberately as Andreas Leffler’s drums methodically accent notes and beats, adding an emotional weight to the melodies without employing overt heaviness. Hilda Heller’s softened ethereal vocals sit atop it all, hypnotising listeners with an unspoken command in her vocal presence. Lyrically musing on the juxtaposition of the idea of a “Death Mother”, a paradoxical concept of birth and death being one and the same. The song lumbers towards tense and powerful crescendos, with their own take on the wall of guitars common to the genre, still with an undeniable heft behind them without being overly distorted and pummelling in their sonic presentation. Everything sounds lavish, drenched in reverb and delay, the soundscape extends past the listener for a grand atmosphere across the album.
“The Hour” doubles down on what Blodet have already established, focusing on playing more with melodic, textural and dynamic experimentation. Deliberate rhythmic accenting with the bass and drums, leaving the guitars to explore more atmospheric elements in the songs introduction. Leaving plenty of open space for the vocals to sit centre stage, conducting the impassioned strain of the instrumental behind it and laying in plenty of memorable vocal hooks. Following is “Lead Me Home”, feeling a lot closer to the SWANS comparisons the band curated, its incredibly eerie, soft and tinged with early new-wave goth. Guitarists Elias Eriksson and Björn Sundqvist play off each other’s melodies, offering a continual development of, or counterpoint to the other’s melodic intentions. The layered vocal harmonies as the dynamics swell add to the toil and longing felt in the lyricism.
“Without Within” is the longest track by a significant margin, a cathartic and weighty exploration of the human psyche. The fifteen minute epic really takes the time to explore itself, indulgent in its pacing. Regularly shifting, playing with dynamics and temperament, adding complexities to melodic exploration and collapsing under its own heartrending burden. Extended instrumental passages continue to repeat and explore various facets of its own structure, growing and fading in power, become swallowed within the layered soundscapes of noisy atmospheric guitar melodies. Heller’s vocal hook “we belong together, drowning in the deep” is haunting, sitting atop the explorative guitar melodies alone, the vocal delivery becoming slightly more erratic and sustained before an almighty instrumental crashes back in.
Album closer “93 – 22” feels a little out of place for the stark production difference compared to what has come before. Zeroing into a focused mid-paced instrumental drive, the lush saturation of reverb and echoing chambers is for the most part gone, everything feeling a lot more raw and intimate. The title suggests this is a very specific ode to Rickie, channeling waves of emotive guitar melodies colour the underlying instrumental. At times it almost sounds like the less electronic tinged moments of 65daysofstatic, the powerful post-rock lines that fuel the drive to an emotional crescendo. However there is no such climax, “93 – 22” comes to a close by letting the main riff continue as the album slowly fades out.
Feeling like a very natural follow up to Vision, Blodet continue to forge their own path on the alternative scene. Their approach to post-rock from their unique perspective for a journey wrought with anguish, existentialism and explorations of love and loss. Emotional catharsis comes in many forms with Death Mother having every requirement necessary to unlock those long hidden away doors.