In His Blood (CD)

The UK’s VACUOUS make their Relapse Records debut with their new album, In His Blood. An overdose of Death Metal, In His Blood is a compelling mix of blazing speeds, chilling atmospherics, and angular rifng that bring the band into their own unique space. “We’ve talked about having diferent infuences, and it felt like a bit of a dare to push things further,” guitarist Michael Brodsky says. “Back in death metal’s formatve days, with bands like Autopsy, Obituary, Incantaton, none of those bands sounded like each other: they were just pushing their collectve infuences together to the extreme. I think we’re stll doing the same thing, just from the point of view of people who grew up in the 2000s.” From the roaring, quick-fre intensity of the ttle track to the hauntng atmospherics of ‘Hunger’ and the cinematc rumbles of ‘Contraband’, with In His Blood VACUOUS push the limits of what listeners might expect from Death Metal. “We have some surprising infuences on this album,” Michael says, explaining that the track ‘Hunger’ came out of imagining what it would sound like if The Cure made a Death Metal song. The spontaneity and attude of punk and hardcore are also an infuence, and Michael namechecks Converge – less for their sound, and more for their mindset and experimental nature. “They’re inspiring for how they meld diferent styles together, but it stll falls loosely within hardcore and metal,” he says. Under the overarching idea of violence and voyeurism, in the album’s lyrics Jo Chen explores a number of topics including horror flms, serial killers, school shootngs, toxic masculinity, and the Global North and South divide. “The song ‘Contraband’ is about the 39 Vietnamese migrants who were sufocated in a lorry trying to come over to England,” Jo says. “It was such a tragedy, but it was blink and you miss it; news today and gone tomorrow. “I was born in London but my family are from Malaysia, which is historically a poor country,” he contnues. “There’s such a juxtapositon when I go back there. Here in the West, generally, people are ofen so comfortable. The only access that some people have to extreme poverty and violence is online.” Going forward, VACUOUS want to keep pushing boundaries, being spontaneous, and taking risks. “We want to have a discography where every album is distnct,” Jo says. “We don’t want to feel like we’re repeatng ourselves. You think of a band like Carcass, who do this and it’s super fun to listen to. We just want to keep trying something diferent.”