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BLOOD VULTURE “Die Close”
BLOOD VULTURE “Die Close”
By Dr. Abner Mality
This album gets described in so many ways, it’s like it’s hiding in a hall of mirrors. “Sludge metal”, “Gothic sludge metal”, “Gothic Doom”, “Sludge Grunge”, etc, etc. In the end, this is an unabashed love letter to the grunge explosion of the 90’s and not much else. It’s kind of cool at first, but as it oozes and slithers along, the river starts to run dry.
It’s the creation of one Jordan Olds, who is a comedian and host of a radio show/podcast called “Two Minutes To Late Night”. Perhaps you are familiar with it...I’m not. Anyway, BLOOD VULTURE is Olds’ attempt to bring grunge to the 2020’s. The music is very well played and extremely well produced, with a great clear sound on all instruments and the vocals. The influence of ALICE IN CHAINS, STONE TEMPLE PILOTS, SCREAMING TREES is slathered over “Die Close” like a thick brushstroke of paint. There’s no escaping it and Jordan’s multi-tracked vocals have the languorous, woozy melody that those bands traded in. The press sheet mentions BLOOD VULTURE has traces of death metal and doom metal in their sound. There’s 0% death metal of any discernible kind here and the faint traces of doom are overwhelmed by grunge.
There is interest in the early tracks like “An Embrace In the Flood” and the angsty, disjointed “A Dream About Starving To Death”. Once the album reaches the mid-point of “Die Close-Interlude”, things start to come across as a kind of cosplay version of grunge’s greatest hits...for example, “Abomination” has got PEARL JAM all over it and “Die Close-Finale” is ALICE ON CHAINS with virtually no variation. So BLOOD VULTURE ultimately winds up as a 90’s grunge cosplay group and as close to a cover band as you can get while still writing “originals”. I personally would have wished for more of the Goth rock, death metal and doom metal influence that I was told would be here.
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