We find it hard to believe that you’ll find a more eclectic concoction of heaviness in the year 2023 beyond what Dublin’s No Spill Blood is offering with their latest outing, Eye Of Night. Like this synthetic orchestra mixed with a diabolically visceral noise experiment, No Spill Blood’s newest LP is an incredible amalgamation of sound that worships the heavy in a lush, vibrant world.
Ominous and foreboding and all the dark things, “Cradle Scythe” creates a gnarly air to start Eye Of Night which never goes away as this towering synthetic presence lords over all with bursts of Matt Hedigan’s screams and Ror Conaty’s drums encompassed in Ruadhan O’Meara’s masterful use of electronics for a feel akin to The Lion’s Daughter but more bleak. By contrast, “Anvil Crawler” is just brutal and blistering and the closest one might come to “straight forward” on this album of wonderfully odd outliers to the term.
“Ad Unguem” is the first to really settle back and lay into a groove built from a hypnotic O’Meara synth line that circulates and recycles its’ harrowing hum over and over again and comes off as a whole like Black Metal Wall Of Voodoo meets the Indie bombast of Secret Machines circa Now Here Is Now (Opener “First Wave Intact” particularly stands out here) with “Toom” venturing further into this new synthetic world created by O’Meara as Conaty’s rumbling nicely meshes with Hedigan’s bass work.
The title track is kind of a culmination of all the sounds that No Spill Blood has brought to the table thus far with a sinister vibe going on during this particularly driven tune that concludes with a similarly hypnotizing synthetic refrain to close it out. “Ekur” thumps and throttles fairly relentlessly with “Cimmerian Maw” lurking around the corner with a gargantuan Goblin-esque instrumental interlude which eventually leads the way to the swirling “Ossein” which is a goliath all on its’ own as Hedigan spits some scary bars. Crashing down in a delightfully tumultuous way, “Dead Satellite” brings Eye Of Night to a head and a close with a primal percussive presence similar to “Tusk” from Conaty rumbling against O’Meara’s huge synths before Hedigan’s pointed growls drive us off the path into a crushing climax that’s both subtle and succinct.
Eye Of Night descends on February 24th through Svart Records and you can pre-order yours now by heading here, here or here. For the latest from No Spill Blood, follow them across ye olde socials when you click here, here, or here.