To Spite the Gland That Breeds

Album review

Blood from the Soul was a one-off project by Sick of It All's Lou Koller and Napalm Death's Shane Embury. It was the sum of its parts, no more and no less. Koller sang, while Embury provided all other instrumentation. The result was a simple fusion of Sick of It All vocals over early-'90s Napalm Death. Well, mostly -- Koller took a break from his typically gritty lyrics to explore more abstract realms: "Painted life not real/Reflections coarse and untrue/Lie beneath veils of doubt/Forced to give birth." His vocals also underwent more reverb than usual. Otherwise, the collaboration was a cut-and-paste job. Koller did well with what he was given, inflecting his signature bark with surprising expressiveness. But, really, any number of vocalists could have done the job over such faceless backing. Embury's dissonant drones came straight from Napalm Death's contemporaneous Fear, Emptiness, Despair. He even approximated Danny Herrera's breakbeat patterns with a drum machine. But drum machines should surpass human drummers, not approximate them. These mechanical beats felt flat, and the whole record was a little sterile. It heated up with the friction of slower speeds; "Natures Hole" was like a cyborg Black Sabbath, while "Blood from the Soul" evoked Swans' bleakness. But for the industrial desperation to which this album aspired, seek out Godflesh or early Fear Factory. There, humans and machines didn't hold hands, but fought to the finish.
© Cosmo Lee /TiVo