Metal outfit Blood Youth — they hail from the land of cream teas and muffins, Harrogate — are a visceral lot, their music loud and uncompromising.

The album is marked by three elements: the frontman’s voice, which gets screamed hoarse over the album’s course — he sounds very annoyed about something, probably the queue for Betty’s Tea Rooms — tempered by moments of harmony, the third element being the bass guitar, which holds the whole thing together with a solid wall of strummed bassness, sounding de-tuned in places; so bassy it could be synth.

We’re not massive fans of this kind of screamy metal but the bass lifts it out of the predictable and makes it pretty listenable.

We’d guess Blood Youth are fans of nu metal: there’s a bit of the first Linkin Park album in here, plus some Slipknot and flavours of bands such as Korn or Deftones. Nu metal eschewed virtuosity and this is the same, very much an ensemble piece.

In counterpoint to the brutal lead vocals, the choruses are often melodic, and the massive riffs and pounding drums thrill the headbanging part of your soul.

There’s nothing new here but the standard never drops from first to last.

We’d normally only play an album like this a couple of times, but this has been on repeat and loud (when nobody’s around, it’s still brutal). All hail bassist Matt Hollinson.

 

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