Register Forgot login?

© 2002-2024
Encyclopaedia Metallum

Privacy Policy

Blood > Impulse to Destroy > Reviews
Blood - Impulse to Destroy

stepping stone - 65%

AxlFuckingRose, March 24th, 2024

Following the template that American grindcore pioneers Napalm Death put forward, Germany’s Blood sought to expand on the formula with 1989’s Impulse to Destroy, a more tame outing with muddier production that stays true to the primal aesthetics of early grindcore. With the majority of tracks here in the one-minute range, the songs are structured as vectors of Blood’s uncontrollable energy without lending too much thought or attention to detail.

Plenty of song ideas here are only half-finished, and tracks like “Spasmo Paralytic Dreams” are frequent; with random cymbal crashes and petrifying, growled vocals, it is difficult to make out a plan that Blood was clearly trying to execute. But the results don’t suffer from this atypical songwriting technique because for grindcore, it is mostly par for the course. “Linear Logical Intelligence” focuses on power and slows the pace before “Why?” frivolously attempts to inject pace into the A-side of the album.

“Technical Abortion” is a mid-tempo track closer to standard death metal of the time with a chugging beginning that bursts into a thrashy second half. “Jesus Never Lived” showcases a bit of complex songwriting with the drum progressions and flashy guitar leads, although the overall template still feels pretty free-form. Truth be told, many of the songs here feel like building blocks that Blood would use to later write more innovative and thought-out tracks on records like Christbait and Depraved Goddess. Taken in context, these songs have merit, but grindcore and subsequent production tactics have simply progressed past where they were at in 1989.

Given the production limitations and the lack of a clear direction, it is hard to see this album as much more than a logical but rather fruitless step in the evolution of grindcore, given its release so early in the timeline, but the highlights of this album are absolutely worth checking out if you can stomach the fuzzy production. It would be nice to hear a fully remastered or rerecorded version of this album in the future if the budget permits.

Lovely, hypnotising racket - 89%

morbert, October 21st, 2008

It’s amazing how some bands or albums are often overlooked by the masses when discussing grindcore. Lust like Unseen Terror or S.O.B., the German boys Blood are often forgotten a bit too easily. Yet in the late eighties and early nineties they were a household name in the European scene with Agathocles and, of course, the legendary Swiss Fear Of God.

Everything about ‘Impulse To Destroy’ is extremely sloppy. The performance, the production, the vocals, you name it. More than half the album was filled with old songs from their earlier days when the band were almost pure noise instead of grindcore. Compared to those demos the versions here obviously sound ‘good’ and structured but still they’re on the verge of losing all musical intentions.

It’s always hard to come up with highlights when disgussing a grindcore album but in this case a few songs really shine. Examples are “Dogmatize” because of its catchy D-beat approach, the vocal lines (and performance) on “Economic Cancer” or the well thought through construction of “Beyond Time And Space”.

As said the album is a mess. At first it can be a hard thing to sit though entirely. The racket often prevents the listener from identifying riffs on the fastest moments on the album. The vocal effects also damaging the clarity of the compositions. Yes, a lot could have been done much better and songs from this album which were later re-recorded were better no matter how and by whom they were recorded. But actually it does have its charm this way. It gives the album as whole a very specific character and I have not heard any album since then even remotely sounding like this.

I must however admit because of all the flaws I don’t listen to it very often (once a year at most maybe) but when I do, I’m dragged into its hypnotising atmosphere within three or four songs. Because of the standardization which crept into most (later contrived and so called) subcategories of grindcore during the second half of the nineties in terms of performance, lyrical contents and production, a typical album such as this only gets better due to its specific character.