Blood command – Cult drugs

Blood command are a punk band from Bergen, Norway that formed almost ten years ago.  They’ve released three EPs and two albums with the last album (Funeral beach) getting great reviews, and now “Cult drugs” is their third album.

The album kicks off with “CTRL+ALT+DELETE”, which I have to say is my least favourite track on the album.  Musically it’s great and when Karina Ljone sings then her vocals are good and well suited to the song, but the problem is her screaming vocals just grate on me, and it’s those vocals you hear first, and they had me reaching for the skip button, but thankfully her clean singing started before I gave up on the track.  There’s nothing wrong with having screaming vocals – in fact they can be fantastic but I just don’t think her voice is suited to that style and they just come across as too thin and weak.

Happily though for most of the album there’s less of the screaming vocals and the songs work better for it, although they do keep rearing their head sadly.  The music is good and heavy and the songs are definitely going to appeal to a wide audience, so I predict the band will do well.

Musically it’s a great album with plenty of really good songs, but the vocals in some of the songs just take away some of the appeal in my opinion.  Vocals are like marmite – for any given singer some people will love their voice while others hate it, and you’ll rarely please everyone.

Track listing:

1. CTRL+ALT+DELETE
2. Cult drugs
3. Quitters don’t smoke
4. Nervous laughter
5. Gang signs
6. You can’t sit with us
7. The secret impresses no one
8. White skin / tanned teeth
9. Initiation tape #1
10. (The world covered in) Purple shrouds