Artist: Bloodbound
Label: AOR Heaven Records
Release: 2007
After the crowds gave their debut “Nosferatu” such a warm reception, the album helped Bloodbound a great deal in sharing stages last year with Arch Enemy, Dark Tranquillity, Evergrey, Pretty Maids and Sabaton (we caught the latter this winter in Ljubljana, opening for Therion), to name just a few.
During last year’s “Nosferatu” tour, the guys had a heap of trouble with an unstable line-up. The lineup that recorded “Nosferatu” hit the road in a seriously reshuffled form. The men who helped the band pull the tour off included Kristian Andrén (Wuthering Heights, Memento Mori, Tad Morose), Johan Sohlberg (The Storyteller), Jörgen Andersson (Baltimoore) and Markus Albertson (Seven Sins). By the end of the tour, singer Urban Breed (known for his work with Tad Morose) decided to leave Bloodbound for good so he could focus on his solo project.
So this January German singer Michael Bormann (Jaded Heart, Bonfire, J.R. Blackmore, Rain, Bormann) joined the band, and they banged out the album in a hurry over January and February. The guys also beefed up the line-up with one more guitarist. Thomas Olsson’s younger brother Henrik is now in charge of rhythm guitar in Bloodbound. And the shake-ups didn’t stop there, because the band also took on a new drummer. That’s Pelle Ĺkerlind (Morgana Lefay), who had already joined up on the “Nosferatu” tour. Let’s hope the band has finally found some stability.
In my review of the previous record, I mentioned that the band had the potential to develop a recognizable identity of its own or to get lost in gray mediocrity, and that the successors to “Nosferatu” would show which way it went. And “Book Of The Dead” sadly confirms that, in their hunger for safe “commercialization,” the guys picked the second option. With “Book Of The Dead,” Bloodbound have turned into gray mice. That the album is technically excellent hardly needs saying. But that carries zero weight if you put nothing of your own into the songs! What bugs and repels is that the band shows absolutely no originality, no spark of a personal identity born of creativity. It’s pure cliché! Power metal imitation of Helloween from head to toe, riffs leaning heavily on retro Judas Priest, the picking over the riffs typical of the German power metal crowd. The only sliver of interest is Bormann’s vocals, which bring a bit of freshness to the band’s sound with his guttural approach. The songs make no secret of their craving for pomp, nor of the thousand-times-chewed-over retreat into themes of cult spiritualism, which is exactly how metalheads love to chase their own tails “like dogs,” spinning in a circle of eternal limitation and repetition. You get a real taste of the torments of Tantalus plowing through this dreadfully mind-numbing hammering of well-worn templates, the plate’s tedious, musty predictability, without a basic quantum of wit or imagination. If you know Helloween, you’re missing absolutely nothing, as long as you keep going round in circles listening to Helloween and their peers in the future too. Bloodbound, just a few more Swedish cookie-cutter hacks. “Book Of The Dead” is an album meant strictly for those who collect only records stamped “power metal” on their shelves, and absolutely everything that comes out under the banner of that genre.
Line-up
Michael Bormann – vocals
Tomas Olsson – guitars
Henrik Olsson – guitars
Fredrik Bergh – bass guitar, keyboards
Pelle Ĺkerlind – drums
Production
Bloodbound
Track list
1. Sign Of The Devil
2. The Tempter
3. Book Of The Dead
4. Bless The Unholy
5. Lord Of Battle
6. Flames Of Purgatory
7. Into Eternity
8. Black Heart
9. Black Shadows
10. Turn To Stone
11. Seven Angels
Running time: 56.30
