Chopping Block Blues

Blood Feast took the metal world by the storm with their blazing 1987 debut, "Kill for Pleasure", an aggressive piece of death/thrash in the vein of Slayer/Exodus with a raw edge that quickly became a bestseller for the amateurish New Renaissance records.

Years passed and Blood Feast had to deal with line-up problems, losing their guitarist and key member Adam Tranquili. Then their label went bankrupt before releasing the already- planned second album, "The Last Remains", delaying the follow-up to their promising debut and probably watering down all their hunger for blood.

I remember back in 1990 reading a "Chopping Block Blues" review in a magazine along with Obituary's "Cause of Death", realizing death metal had become way more popular than thrash at that point. I also noticed how Obituary's and Blood Feast's careers were going in radically different directions (for some reason, I always thought the frenzy playing, fuzzy guitar tone, and overall atmosphere on "Slowly We Rot" had something in common with "Kill for Pleasure").

Most thrash bands were softening their music, some playing half-thrash ala "Black Album", but for an underground band it was never a good choice, in my opinion. Blood Feast should have added more death metal to their music to stay relevant, maybe tuning down guitars or singing with a lower register. With a few adjustments, they could have sounded like Obituary with Gary Markovitch having the potential to challenge John Tardy. Surely, it's too easy to say this now.

Anyway, the band chose to go in the "wrong" direction, going "techno-thrash" when that scene was already dying and saturated, and to be honest, they hadn't any chance to be successful, being average players at best. With a better production and more complex song structures, in fact, all Blood Feast sloppiness became crystal clear on "Chopping Block Blues".

The lack of good riffs hidden by furious playing on their past releases increased dramatically along with Mike Basden's laughable attempts at "melodic" leads all over the place and finally the changed vocal approach by Gary Markovitch, now sounding like a weaker Tom Araya being the last nail in the coffin.

I can't believe this album has an higher score than "Kill for Pleasure" on Metal Archives. It's just the feeble death yell of another promising thrash band screwed by the record label and slowly killed by the decline of the scene.

After the chaos that went on in Kill For Pleasure Blood Feast started heading in a more controlled & calm direction. Chopping Block Blues may not be as fast as the previous full length release but it’s an entertaining album none the less.

Well to begin with the production on this album is great, it has a clear & controlled feel to it & is far from the barbarity that plagued Kill For Pleasure. Also this album has a few quirks to it in the production that I find slightly amusing, like the pre-chorus in Hunted, Stalked & Slain, with it’s warped and eerie feel.

But musicianship is better this time around. The guitar work is slowed way down, but it’s taken a more technical step, not a huge step like Vendetta took, but it feels more intelligent than Kill For Pleasure. They’ve also gotten more controlled, but they still contain a decent amount of energy to keep one’s attention up, well except Hitler Painted Roses which I find a very dull cover tune. As for the solo work it’s decent, the best would be in Hunted, Stalked & Slain, with the darkened overtone & the speedy finish. That’s something I failed to mention before, the guitar when stacked up with their previous releases have this dark & sinister vibe to them, which I really dig personally. The rhythm section is decent as well. The percussion is fairly fast but is a bit undermixed, the bass as well. Their audible in most places but often you get these parts where it has a thin sound because of the undermixed rhythm section. But as for the vocals they’ve been toned down since their debut, Gary Markovitch took a more calm approach. Now he still has moments reminiscent of Kill For Pleasure but their mostly in the choruses of the songs. One other aspect of the music that is enjoy is the into/outro to the title track, with the Frenchmen yelling “Test the Guillotine!”.

Chopping Block Blues is a good album with some minor faults that overall holds it back somewhat. But when compared to it predecessors this is quite the gem-89%

“…a practicing Christian, we all know Roddy Piper’s our lord…”

A new label, a new mixing house, and the leaving of Adam “not so tranquil” Tranquilli almost lifts Blood Feast into the adorable ‘90s. Chopping Block Blues (if memory serves, the original title was The Last Remains) departs a bit from Kill for Pleasure’s more straightforward, yet self-editing complexion as well as what the track “Face Fate” appeared to be setting up for the masses. The Stardust Studios production is similar to that of Waterfront’s ep undertaking, still stubbled with that layer of fuzz that after three releases can only be explained by the band purposely asking for that particular character of sound. As for finesse, the four-piece romance things a bit, throwing in an oddball vestige or two to spice up a style that was already near the end of a facelift.

The album starts with a track fractured into two sections, then is placed to bookend the lp. Interesting idea, but unfortunately both trail on the side of the unremarkable. “The Last Remains” starts the disc off as an intro-mental of sorts, pedestrian in arrangement but boasts early keyboard flight haunting a jangly, pseudo-acoustical interlude the likes of Anacrusis and Thought Industry would be writing in a few years. Not something Blood Feast had hinted at previously (the Face Fate ep would’ve been a prime place for it instead of side B’s upgrade-of-mix-values hurrah), and the question was would this newfangled songwriting dynamic shimmy its way into the rest of the lp’s girth? The final track, “Remnants”, is well meant and lyrically swaggering (“I have no fear as I walk through the valley of death, for I am the meanest motherfucker in the valley”), obvious in its implication, but musically fails to finish the lp with the closing witchery they were surely shooting for.

Fortunately for the money-spender, what’s sandwiched in-between rolls nearer the top of the wave. With keyboards fresh in mind, a deft ear isn’t needed to find them in “Hunted, Stalked and Slain”’s eerie "Arlis turns around…”-like verses as well as the bleakly lingering soundscape following the second chorus. Oddly enough, with keyboards now seemingly seated in the band’s sound, they’re not heard again ‘til the very end. Gary Markovitch’s vocals have tamed a bit, seldom caterwauling with shrieks of lunacy and drag along the ground with a street-level, unkind toughness that some people couldn’t quite see around. “The Chemically Imbalanced”, “Dropping Like Flies” and “Born Innocent” are sufficiently thrashed, nothing over the top but compelling in their arrangements with tempo and structural changes not uncommon, swaying a bit toward the technical overtones some bands were finding to their liking at the time. The cake’s icing is a great cover of Mighty Sphincter’s “Hitler Painted Roses”, complying with the flat-faced, protracted, and indifferent personality of the original.

Overall and simply put, a fairly strong lp that’s more intelligent lyrically and musically, but doesn’t quite share the brutal fervor of its siblings. This, of course, would be the final resting place for Blood Feast with their '02 best-of compilation that unearthed some unknown tracks something I never bothered to get my hands on.

No, the blurb at the top aren't the actual lyrics, but some of my friends and I always liked to think it’s what Markovich is babbling about at the start of “Hunted, Stalked and Slain”. It’s good for a laugh in the rare occurrence we’re all at the same bar getting plastered.

I actually heard this album, Blood Feast's second, before Kill for Pleasure, and at the time I wasn't all that impressed. After getting KfP and loving it, I gave Chopping Block Blues another spin, and ended up appreciating it more. It's still not quite as good as Kill for Pleasure, but not as horrible as I first thought (actually, not that bad at all).

Where the first album sounded totally out of control, this sounds more like the second wave of thrash that started springing up in 1989 - overall, it sounds more controlled and technical. Though the parts themselves are as fast as ever, there are more intricate riffs and song/dynamic/tempo shifts throughout. The solos are a bit more technical and melodic, not so crazy as on the first album (I wonder if the departure of guitarist Adam Tranquilli had anything to do with that, or the more technical shift of the band as a whole...). Even the vocals changed to a more controlled style - gone is Gary Marovitch's frantic-death-scream vocals style, traded for a sort of nasally whine-type thing, but still rhythmically phrased in a frantic (and slightly off-beat) manner. Those vocals more than anything else may be what caused people to hate this album - I could actually believe that these two albums were done by two different bands, and the change may have just thrown people off.

Production is noticeably thicker, and even a few keyboards are added here and there. Hot spots are "Hunted, Stalked, and Slain," "Dropping Like Flies," a cover of a Mighty Sphincter song ("Hitler Painted Roses"), and the album's closer, "Remnants", one of the more clever perversions of Psalm 23 I've heard.

Bottom line, it's not quite as good as the first one and very different; still, it's a pretty worthwhile find if you were into the whole technical thrash thing of the late 80s.

(Originally published at LARM (c) 1999)