Album Review: Lunar Blood - Twilight Insurgency
Reviewed by Sam Jones
So Lunar Blood here are a particularly new band, having formed in 2020. It's striking me as bizarre and peculiar that we now have bands forming during what was the start of the pandemic, it always amazes me the lengths to which people will go to form up and produce music. But Lunar Blood are a very new band, their catalogue is pretty bare having only released one Demo within the same year as their formation. So for the vast majority of people, Twilight Insurgency is more than likely the gateway record that will hopefully open people’s eyes up to what Lunar Blood can deliver for them. What is however good to acknowledge is that most of the band members here are also part of other acts like Woodland Tomb, Cowardice and Reeking, so while this is the band’s first major release its nice to know they’ve got prior experience under their belts; this isn’t their first rodeos. So, let’s look into Twilight Insurgency and pick apart what these young guys have managed to piece together.
This is certainly heavily influenced by Swedish death metal, you can hear it in how the riffs have that signature ripping aesthetic. It’s not as segmented or broken up as rudimentary death metal would be out of the US, the band blend their riffs together thereby making it trickier to pick apart where one section ends and another begins. It’s entirely plausible that some people are going to criticise the record for this it could result in an album that isn’t as defined or refined, yet I would argue Lunar Blood make it work for their songwriting as while they’re clearly playing at speed for a good portion of the record they also know when to slow things down. At the very least they know when to produce that blockier style of riffing all the while still implementing a sharp, ripping form of guitar playing that doesn’t let up its intensity simply because the band want to give audiences something that’s a little more cohesive. It’s like listening to a monster, just because it’s slowing down doesn’t mean it’s teeth aren’t just as serrated as they were beforehand.
But what works for the band here in conjunction with the primary riff performance, is how strong and present the bass presents itself as. The better part about this as well, is how immediate it’s presence is too. The bass doesn’t come in to your attention halfway through their record whereby you can’t help but notice it then or now; the bass, from the first second, is at your ears and effectively tickling your experience of this record as it’s playing and that’s just from the first song alone. The bass possesses a meaty and thick underlayer which nicely reinforces the belly of this record yet it’s not the kind of basslines that seek to dominate or compete with the main riffs. It’s clear that the riffs are the main focus of the band’s attention, the bass in this instance is just at the edge of importance within the mix so we’re capable of expediting and enjoying the bass and riffs equally without feeling like one is dominating the other.
You may notice how the band have chosen not to give us that much time, with less than 30 minutes to introduce us to what is, in reality, their debut studio work. Sometimes a short album is effective, it helps you get right to the point of what your sound is about and if audiences enjoy it then it’ll make for easy, repeated listens. But it also works well for the band’s songwriting too. Much of their songwriting, as we’ve touched upon prior, consists of rapid fire drumming and riffs that move frantically from one variation to another. The band aren’t hanging around here either in runtime or songwriting, their pace is naturally quite fast as per your expectations to such a short running record however the intensity at which their riffs and performance comes at you is bristling with energy so while most tracks aren’t going to push the three minute mark you’ll feel like you’ve received plenty of material out of the band’s potential for the record.
As you would expect from such an album too, the drums are breakneck paced and during the band’s aggressive and ferocious moments they never let up with blast beats galore. The destructive tendencies the drums deliver on fuse wonderfully with the band’s bladed aesthetic and, while the riffs are going full bore, the drums are able to come in from the background utilising a production that’s lent them a taut yet firmly impacting strike. The bass may be considerable within the mix and out of the bass itself but I found it wasn’t siphoned all that strongly where the drums are concerned. In spite of this the drums were able to deliver on everything you either wanted out of this record or what the band wanted you to experience. This is all the more prevalent after we continue to hear these small segments, where the songwriting breaks and slows down some more, where the drums also deconstruct themselves and give us more intricate demonstrations of what the band can bring to the drums aside from, what some may regard as, a copy and paste style of blast beating.
In conclusion, this was an entertaining listen from Lunar Blood. I feel like there could have been more done to differentiate this record from the slew of modern albums inspired by the Swedish extreme metal scene but on the whole, I believe Lunar Blood did well with their debut album. I would certainly like to see them do more with their sound, perhaps branch out here and there into something that will definitely cement their sound as their own yet, in spite of this, there are instances where the band were already experimenting with this from time to time during this record. A second or third album i hope would really solidify what Lunar Blood have to offer because there is legitimate potential here. Overall I’d certainly recommend this album to fans of Swedish death metal, particularly if you’re after something of a noticeably higher quality.
