Quick Reviews: Bloodbound & Spanish Love Songs

Today is a day for giving thanks... but we're not going to be doing that so much with these albums. I had a few things I wanted to say about them, but I don't want to waste too much of my time, so let's dispatch with them quickly.

Bloodbound - Field Of Swords

For most of these last twenty years, Bloodbound albums have been interesting only in how they were going to wind up disappointing me. I was disappointed when Urban Breed left, I was disappointed when Michael Bormann joined, I was disappointed when Urban left again, I was disappointed when the band tried on other band's sounds as if they were going to a costume party, and I was disappointed when they settled on a sound that is aggressively bland.

The band has been in a groove now for a few records, and that groove is worn rather thin. They remain professionals who put out a good sounding product, but Bloodbound is one of those bands that tests my patience when I say I want much that has heart and real humanity behind it. Everything about Bloodbound feels forced, written for the sake of putting out another album to keep their contract satisfied.

They have jumped on the bandwagon of writing about warn and history, which I don't find an interesting topic. Either there aren't enough words in a song to tell a meaningful historical narrative, or the words become stilted and dry trying to do so. And when your singer has a voice that has little personality to it, that leaves the whole thing feeling as if I've heard it a dozen times before. In fact, the only thing about this record that gets my attention at all is the fact their singer has two horns apparently implanted in his skull. I know it doesn't impact the music at all, but I find it hard to take the band seriously like that. Yes, they started out wearing corpse paint, but that is obviously an affectation. This is... more permanent, and a real head-scratcher why someone who plays the most inoffensive music would have that kind of image.

Bloodbound remains this; listen to "Tabula Rasa", forget the rest exist.

Spanish Love Songs - A Brief Intermission In The Flattening Of Time

I have said before that I don't give points for experimentation, because not all experiments work out. Sometimes, the desire to try something new leads a band down a path that doesn't fit their sound or style, and I don't think I should commend them for focusing on their weaknesses. You can experiment all you want, but releasing the results when they aren't up to par doesn't make you daring or brave, it means I'm going to question if you understand what makes your music appealing to the audience.

I asked that when Spanish Love Songs followed up the brilliant "Brave Faces Everyone" with a record that left behind all of the power and anger for a sound that was weaker, flimsier, and focused on the most annoying and aggravating vocal timbre. The record that helped get us through the hardest moments of the Covid era was replaced with a record that sounded like a bad version of 00s indie. I didn't understand the shift, and I have tried to forget it. But now there's a new EP, so that becomes hard to do.

Each of these songs comes with a collaboration, and the extra artistic voices are extra shades of gray in the band's new monotone. Rather than adding texture to the songs, they reveal how little of the core is left. The song with The Wonder Years should be a thundering expression of both band's raw passion, but instead the guitars noodle around a single synth note, while the main vocal drags along a chorus that sounds like a verse. The Wonder Years put out a wrestling theme song this year, and it buries this track so deep they'll never find the corpse.

"Cocaine & Lexapro" sounds like being passed out on drugs, your mind struggling to come out of its coma. "Heavenhead" wants to rock, but the amps are so small and undergained the guitars come off sounding like we're trying to listen to "Brave Faces Everyone" through Airbuds when they aren't in our ears. The reference to the flattening of time is apt, as this is a flat version of Spanish Love Songs; devoid of any power, passion, or damn memorable songs. I listened to this after "Brave Faces Everyone", and it's hard to believe we're talking about the same band. What a shame.