Antiseen – New Blood
Antiseen – New Blood CD (Switchlight Records)
A new Antiseen album? Yes… but kinda no too. ‘New Blood’ is a collection of the band’s singles released between 2008 and 2011, with a few brand new songs added for good measure. To the credit of the boys from Brutalsville – and to the stellar mastering job on this release – ‘New Blood’ sounds for all the world like an album rather than a compilation, and it certainly is one that fans will not want to miss. There has always been an element of danger surrounding Antiseen, and an unmistakable aura of controversy that they do nothing to dissipate (and everything to exacerbate, it seems). Nothing’s changed here. Tracks like ‘Reconstruction’ confuse the hell out of me because I can’t tell if the band’s drunken, drugged-out, redneck pride is all fun-and-games rhetoric or if there is something more sinister lurking beneath the surface. Since things tend to remain sufficiently vague – and since any band whose operating model is an equal-parts mixture of Lynyrd Skynyrd, early-early Corrosion Of Conformity, and Motorhead – I am more than willing to give them the benefit of the doubt and stick around through the stuff about old Dixie to get to the stuff that really stands out. Here, the standouts include blistering covers of Ramones (‘Chain Saw’) and The Sonics (‘The Witch’) alongside originals like ‘The Mysterious Green Mist’, ‘Invader One Must Die’, and ‘Pledge Allegiance To The Bomb’. With thirteen cuts of mayhem and a guest appearance from Joe Buck (Hank III, JoeBuckYourself), ‘New Blood’ is a worthy purchase for anyone with a taste for hellbilly hardcore and not-so-clean fun. The Impaler @impalerspeaks
