Grand Supreme Blood Court - Bow Down Before the Blood Court
The last thing I want to do is come off as anti-Martin van Drunen in any way, shape or form. Consuming Impulse, The Rack, Last One on Earth, and even Converging Conspiracies are all stranded-on-an-island selections for yours truly, and no one was more excited than myself to hear that trademark, inimitable scream return to the Death Metal fold in 2008 with Hail of Bullets, and with Asphyx a year later. …of Frost and War — flawless. Death…the Brutal Way — a masterpiece. The Warsaw Rising EP — awesome. On Divine Winds — titties. The split with Hooded Menace — ice cream. But it seems the quality of the man’s output has hit somewhat of a wall in 2012. Deathhammer was such a bland, unremarkable effort that not one but two of the biggest Asphyx fans on the planet couldn’t even review it, and now we have the debut album from Grand Supreme Blood Court — essentially Asphyx with a much lamer moniker. The only member of the Court not currently or formerly of Asphyx is bassist Theo van Eekelen, who happens to be in Hail of Bullets… close enough. This project does reunite van Drunen with longtime Asphyx guitarist Eric Daniels for the first time since 1992, but that doesn’t save Bow Down Before the Blood Court from being a tedious dragger. It starts out okay. “All Rise!” is a surefire Death/Doom crowd-pleaser with verses that get the feet tapping and a chorus that provokes a nice slow-motion clockwise headbang, while the title track is sure to get a circle pit going with its chorus. But by the fifth or sixth track, you’ll be thinking about your shitty day at work. And if somehow you’re not asleep by the end, vapid 10-minute closer “And Thus the Billions Shall Burn” will take care of that. I love Old School simplicity as much as the next ogre, but these riffs are just lifeless. A void of technicality and an absence of dynamics so dreadful it’s hypnotic. An exercise in mind-wandering to say the least. Van Drunen’s vocals are phoned in. Period. Clearly he’s overworked to the point of battle fatigue. Take a break, Martin. I understand the desire to make up for lost time, but not if the material suffers from it. This isn’t a bad record, just a boring and forgettable one. Two adjectives that don’t belong in any sentence regarding this legendary vokillist.
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