Blood Eagle is a deathgrind band from my home country, Denmark and is the supposed 'supergroup' of leftover musicians from Hatesphere, Volbeat and Mercenary. Now I don't mean that in a bad way, it is just that the 'supergroup'-expression is something I really dislike. Most of these 'supergroups' have not really amounted anything besides having impressive lineups, obviously there are few exceptions, like Bloodbath and Down, but those have big musicians like Mikael Åkerfeldt and Phil Anselmo. The members in Blood Eagle are the a bassist from Hatesphere, a drummer from Raunchy and a brief guitarist from Volbeat. There has to be a limit, you know what I am saying? I obviously mean no disrespect to the musicians of Blood Eagles talents, I just think that there should be a limit on when we label things a 'supergroup'. Anyway, enough of my rambling, lets get to the music.
So a good thing is that the production is great, it is really thick and feels like a hammer pounding down on you. The drums are well-played, but lacks energy. The hi-hat is way too high in the mix and makes the snaredrum disappear whenever blast beats are being played, which is a really bad things since snaredrums are essential in deathgrind. It has to be said, in the slower/mid-paced sections the snare sounds good. While I have no problem with clicky bassdrums, but the ones used here got a little annoying by the end (which is saying a lot since this EP is only nearly ten minutes).
The bass is inaudible, which is in some cases excusable since deathgrind tends to blend all the instruments together. The guitars on this EP are some of the best I have heard in a while, they are really heavily distorted, which fits the musical agenda. The riffs, while not the best, are really well performed and gives a great mix between death metal and thrash metal. They also sometimes feel like they belong in a post-metal band, which is evident in the end of the song, Death Sub Zero.
The vocals are not bad per se. But what ruins it for me, is that the singer sounds like he tried to combine the deep, hoarse growling of death metal and the screaming and yelling vocals of grindcore. I think the vocals would sound much better if they went either way, and did not combine the two voices into one.
Overall, this was not a bad experience as it may seem like. It is very short one, only ten minutes into three songs, but I actually have no doubt that this was a teaser trailer for what is to come, and I think that Blood Eagle could create something great for the danish metal scene. The really fast deathgrind stuff mixed with the hard-pounding post-metal and mid-paced thrash metal sections are really good, but they just needed that extra push to make it great.
Rating
