8/10
Kevin Moore and Jim Matheos have finally recorded an album that lives up to the paper promises of this project. While the group’s 2003 debut with Mike Portnoy on drums did little to titillate the imagination and 2006’s Free proved equally predictable, Blood feels like a genuine surprise, the kind of record that Porcupine Tree should be making if only Steve Wilson and Co. could get over the idea of swimming into the mainstream and if ol’ Steve were a little less obsessed with glistening production
The album opens with “The Escape Artist,” a heavy mother that doesn’t relent for the entirety of its nearly six minutes; that’s followed by the eerie, “No Quarter”-esque “Terminal” (that is, of course, if “No Quarter” had appeared on Pretty Hate Machine), the truly atmospheric “We Come Undone” (the kind of thing that will excite fans of Ulver, David Torn and the moodiest of film soundtracks) and the titular track, which features Opeth belter Mikael Akerfeldt.
The album has two moments that prove disappointing––oddly enough, they’re the shortest tracks––the meandering sound collage that is “Microburst Alert” and what might be an attempt at a track made for radio play, the mildly derivative “False Start.” (the track sounds like the Dandy Warhols’ “Bohemian Like You” in a knife fight with the Mars Volta.) Elsewhere, Matheos and Moore (who are joined by drummer Gavin Harrison of the aforementioned Porcupine Tree) prove themselves more than worthy of the hero worship they’ve amassed over the decades and which will no doubt grow once the public dips its ears in Blood.––––––––––––––––––––––Jedd Beaudoin
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