Poison Blood - "Deformed Light" (Song Premiere)
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Multi-instrumentalist Jenks Miller’s various forays into metal all seem to exist in such a way. Horseback’s own flirtations with various styles meet all the hallmarks – the blasting of “Thee Cult ov Henry Flynt” dissolves into psychedelic expanse, “Tyrant Symmetry”‘s grooving haze grips onto black metal’s harsh buzz, and even slowcore ballad “Blood Fountain”‘s eventuality is an unexpected melt of avant-jazz drums. Miller’s work exists in a strange grey area, uniquely fusing disparate elements of unrelated genres.
Much like Horseback before it, Poison Blood’s “black metal” isn’t totally black metal. Yes, it blasts and grates, and, yes, it boasts Krieg’s Neill Jameson’s throat-rending gargle, but there’s a lot more under the surface. Resting on a heavy foundation once led by Nick Blinko, Poison Blood’s mid-paced stomp finds a middle ground between Marko Laiho’s early, stumbling work as Beherit and the previously alluded Rudimentary Peni’s psychotic, minimal punk. However strict and simple, Poison Blood appears to expand outward in a strange sort of mental psychedelia, however foreboding. So, yes, Poison Blood, can be considered “blackened” as much as it can find solace in the “punk” and “psychedelic” tag, but it’s also not quite any of those. Yet again, Jenks Miller finds himself in the grey area to which he consistently holds dominion.
Poison Blood’s eponymous EP will be released August 11th on Relapse Records. Head below for an exclusive first listen of “Deformed Lights”.
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From the artists:
“Neill sounds like he’s gargling blood on this track.
The riffs here are a good example of what I was trying to do musically. I wanted to write riffs that were really catchy, with an almost sing-song quality to them. Obviously evil, but also whimsical, like a children’s song. The first track on the record (“The Scourge and the Gestalt,” which Relapse has already released on the web) is slower, a kind of doomy preamble before the record shifts into a higher gear for a few tracks.
Production-wise I tried to steer clear of the cavernous sound of a lot of current “bestial” bands, because I wanted the riffs to stick. But this kind of music also needs a lo-fi grit. My all-time favorite metal record is probably The Lord Diabolus’ (pre-Beherit) Down There… demo. I was trying for the density of that recording, or what Beherit would achieve on Drawing Down the Moon, only with a bit more clarity.”
-Jenks Miller
“Deformed Lights” was the song that truly cemented what my conceptual approach to the record would be. Something about it make me think of the desert at night, not in a stoner rock approach but more just how desolate, especially at night when it grows cold and the shadows hide their secrets. And as Americans it seems that much of the black metal scene here doesn’t draw from this sort of inspiration, I guess because corpse paint melts in that kind of heat, but I was somehow drawn to it through what Jenks had written.
On a simpler aesthetic level, this is the song out of any of the others on the record which seems to blend later period Rudimentary Peni and Beherit together the most while showing off the kind of guitar layering that you can find in Jenks’ other work. I can’t really speak about my contribution, I just yell at shit, which seems to be how I spend most of my spare time anyway.
-Neill Jameson
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