Lunar Blood – Twilight Insurgency
Release Date: 18th February 2022
Label: Soulfood
Bandcamp
Genre: Death Metal
FFO: All Pigs Must Die, Cult Leader, Trap Them.
Review By: Jay Creepy
Weird one this, the sound quality is akin to a demo punk album mixed with an old black metal tape from Europe. Is that bad? Yes and no, it’s a bit hard to make everything out, but what can be heard is busy and tight in places. From track one, Purified Rot, Lunar Blood are great at transitioning their rhythms and collective noises. The drums are fast and everything echoes. It’s not complete grindcore head twisting like Last Days of Humanity, but the pace is frantic, continuing into The Hammer, vocalist Jake Kruger growls, snarls and vomits bile down his face to deliver lyrics that are hard to translate, but we don’t listen to death metal for verbal harmonies, do we?
After a few short splats of songs (too short) Wrath March slows the levels down only slightly then blows demented drums apart (thanks Chris Ward) and the duo of guitar stranglers, Mark Guiliano and Nick Zwiren really reach a peak working together, almost tribal and intense.
A majority of the tracks begin with samples and speeches, this is good, I’ve always liked that on an album, gets your attention so long as it isn’t too lengthy. Parliament of Trees feels like early Killswitch Engage, at least before Jake unleashes his rotten bloody throat again. Gnawed is a totally different direction to the rest, standing out over the rest, but then afterward, God of the Trainwreck illustrates what is wrong with this, the muggy production (at least on the version I listened to) pushes it all into one pool of filthy noise and, aside from one or two moments there’s no diversity.
I couldn’t get excited enough to write one of my usual style reviews because nothing (aside from Gnawed) truly thrilled me and made my ears bleed.
Lunar Blood have only been together in this form since 2020, some members have played side by side in other bands, but I get the feeling that they aren’t totally solid as a unit yet. Maybe another year of sweating in clubs and dark places may enlighten and gather further imaginings in music. I will check them out in the future because there’s some good, but a lot of emptiness surrounding. 
(2.5 / 5)
