In the twilight of the 1980s, when transatlantic tape trails still carried secrets from continent to continent, a name began to spread like smoke through the European underground: Blasphemy. It arrived not as music, but as a rupture — a violent, structureless convulsion that seemed to sneer at the very idea of melody. For some, it was madness; for others, it was prophecy. War Metal was not born with grace — it was torn from the womb, shrieking, cloaked in sulfur and defiance.
Now, in 2025, that old spirit returns — not as nostalgia, but as a fresh wound — and its name is Bloed.
Whispers preceded them, as whispers often do. A four-headed beast stirring in Amsterdam’s underworld. Tape traders murmured. Flyers appeared, scrawled with cryptic sigils. And then came the announcement: Bloed would take the stage at Pankraker Festival — the mecca of all things raw and feral in the Low Countries. That same weekend, their debut demo emerged like a weapon unsheathed, its timing too precise to be anything but deliberate.
Photographs followed, though they revealed little beyond silhouette and threat. Four figures in leather and spikes, their faces daubed not in performance but in declaration. The paint was not to dazzle; it was to obscure. Names soaked in occultism, belts heavy with bullets, postures that dared you to look away. This was not reinvention. This was desecration — with intent.
And then, the tape.
At first: chaos. But listen longer, and the pattern emerges — not of cleanliness, but of conviction. Beneath the barrage lies the thrum of crust punk’s heartbeat: relentless d-beats, surging forward like a street march turned riot. This is not mimicry of Blasphemy’s storm, but evolution by fire — a new shape cut from old cloth, charred at the edges.
Unlike so many who attempt this path and slip into formless murk, Bloed does not falter. Their riffs grind like old mining gears resurrected from centuries of rust. Vocals do not scream so much as gnaw — they rise from below, coated in soot. The sound is lo-fi, but not by accident. It is foggy like an invocation, dirty like protest. Every hiss and scrape is a mark of authenticity.
The punk spirit runs deep here — not as genre, but as attitude. This is music that says: No. No to polish. No to expectation. No to compromise. The layout is DIY, the tape raw, the atmosphere thick with rejection of all things pristine. Bloed is not for the passive listener. This is not background noise. It is a curse you must choose to hear.
This is cult — in the oldest, truest sense. This is for the basement-dwellers, the squat veterans, the ones who still believe in noise as rebellion and performance as exorcism. There is no precision here. No progression. Only a furnace burning on street-level rage and sacred disorder.
And for those who seek that — for those who bow at the altar of noise, chaos, and confrontation — Bloed may be your new liturgy.
85/100
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