Most Precious Blood

Do Not Resuscitate (Bullet Tooth)
By Mike Delano

Listening to too much metal can turn your brain to mush. Not in a Bible-thumping, Ned Flanders told-you-so kinda way – it’s just that in today’s post-everything, heavily splintered metal world of throwbacks and revivals, sometimes distinguishing between blackened thrash, tech death, trad, Neur-Isis clones and the like can become wearying. You develop an affinity for minutiae that would make a dungeon master jealous, and wonder when something will come along that just hits you on passion alone, not because of carefully considered subgenre affiliations. So while there are precious few surprises on the fourth album (and first in five years) from hardcore stalwarts Most Precious Blood (who in 2011 mark 10 years together, although its members have much deeper roots in the scene), the band’s forceful take on boilerplate hardcore will certainly grab you by the throat. Do Not Resuscitate, one of the first releases on emerging hardcore haven Bullet Tooth (formed from the ashes of Trustkill Records), won’t win any awards for originality (well, except maybe for their deft incorporation of sound effects from Sega classic Altered Beast), but there is some interesting electronic noodling on “Upstate Ghost” and the surprisingly awesome balladry of “Of Scattered Ants That Swarm Together.” The otherwise uniform sound can make many of the songs melt into each other a little too easily, but if modern life sometimes makes you want to transform into a human fireball and bounce around like a pinball of death, let this be your fuel.
(www.bullettooth.com)