I, Melachi ibn Amillar, being of unsound mind and body, did audition the album "The Thousandfold Epicentre" (2012) by "The Devil's Blood", in June 2012. I should record that my first impulse, on opening this, in the 2LP version, was literally to wow at the album-sized lyric booklet, in a magnificent multi-coloured style with spidering script on surrealistic imagery somewhere between William Blake and Salvador Dali. I cannot immediately recall such impressive presentation, particularly in the digital age. As to the music, my first thoughts were - retro, in fact so retro I would not have been surprised to hear them launch into "Age of Aquarius". Essentially a hippy-chick vocal sometimes doubled, with driving but not very heavy rock, certainly no more so, than, say, Procol Harum. But the most remarkable thing is the rhythm, it is all in a galloping pace, which I think is technically 8/8, and quite unusual elsewhere. Even in the couple of slow songs at the end, they feel as though they are just waiting to go back into that rhythm. As to the lyrics themselves, they seem to be about the relationships between the material and the spiritual, and it is somewhat satanic, though more in the abstract Manichaean sense than the simpler "dark mass" variety. The guitars play a muted role, and the songs are progressive, in that they progress, but more in the sense of variations on a simple theme than fully fledged-song suites. The last three tracks are slower and more atmospheric, the final one having a long play-out section which is not perhaps sufficiently varied to be interesting on record.
So, retro and remarkable, but is this actually any good? I think it is very good, in terms of presentation, unity of theme, general musicality, and consistency (there are no weak tracks). I would very much like to see them live, when I imagine this band could easily sound much heavier and the play-out sections would be more effective. The weakness is that there are no stand-out songs - I have heard it many times and cannot quite remember any themes. But compared to other releases around this is clearly one of the most interesting, and it is blessed by Melachi (in the sign of the cross, that shall be inverted!).
