BLOOD OATH
BLOOD OATH "Lost In An Eternal Silence"
By Dr. Abner Mality
In South America, the ancient traditions of metal are still a vital part of the genre. Chile's BLOOD OATH seemingly dwell in everlasting 1989, where thrash and death metal are virtually inseparable and DEATH is a fresh young face on the scene. South America boasts many of these archaic bands, but BLOOD OATH are pretty much in a world of their own...the last 30 years never happened for these guys.
"Lost In An Eternal Silence" takes some getting used to and will probably baffle anybody used to shiny Nuclear Blast style production, but these cats can jam. They take aspects of "Schizophrenia/Beneath The Remains" SEPULTURA, DEATH and POSSESSED and swirl them together in a loose, unpredictable way that keeps you on your toes. "Beyond The Dimensional Gates" and "Sanctuary of Souls" flat out jam, leaping from riff to riff and tossing out surprisingly progressive lead guitar solos whenever the mood hits. The production is absolutely 1989 standard, being a little on the dry and murky side.
What really surprised me about BLOOD OATH is how prominent the bass is throughout. It absolutely is a huge part of the band's sound and actually drives many songs forward...just listen to it bubble and pop on "The Sacrifice". As for vocals, they very much exude strong Jeff Bercerra and Evil Chuck vibes, with that phlegmmy kind of sound.
Top tracks for me are the aforementioned "Sanctuary of Souls" which is truly off the wall like early death-thrash, "Singularity" which performed the amazing feat of sounding like both "Scream Bloody Gore" and "Human" era DEATH and the ancient prog-death mastery of "Journey Into the Depths" which captures the "Schizophrenia" era SEPULTURA sound. If you ever wanted to jump into a time machine and go back to 89/90 death metal days, BLOOD OATH are your boys for sure.