### Blood Stained: Infected

#### 30/03/10 || Trauma

I’ve been pretty pleased with a lot of the metal I hear coming out of Finland lately. I used to figure they were all shit like Children of Bodom, Stratovarius, and/or Amoral (the newer shit, to prevent any completely unnecessary hate-mail) with names like Petääluääjuoäämää. As it stands for nearly a year now, I have been proven wrong. There is definitely some quality and this quite prejudice bastard from the United States of Assholes is more than happy to take a listen to whatever has been rising from the depths of one of a million lakes.

Blood Stained, quite obviously generic name aside, are playing some fine metal here. It always helps to have an opener that begins in such a way as “My Burden” with its deathrashy (oh my Jesus fuck I hate typing that… please accept this as my resignation from ever using that term again) as fuck riff. Me likey, and they didn’t fuck it all up with a completely gay vocalist a la Vio-Lence. He’s no king of growls, but effective along with the tunes he surely is. When they get into some melodic parts, and he continues with the strained growling, its fits like a penis into an anus.

That is a good fit, in case you’re a dirty heterosexual.

On to more things that actually have to do with the music at hand. Chuck steak. Rib-eye. Filet Mignon. All things I don’t eat, vegetarianism is the cool thing to practice, and (wait for it…) can you guess what Blood-stained would be? That’s right, flank. Just kidding, Blood-stained is a rib-eye of the death metal genre. Not the most tender (5)piece out there, not the most “expensive” (see overproduced for a comparison), with some fat trimmings still within the music, but in a lot of ways that’s very desirable and quite tasty. It is not in a uniflavored environment, as it captures the flavors of whatever you decide to cook it with (fats tend to cling to stuff, you know). In this case, these guys cooked up some death metal with a little bit of thrash and got quite the taste out of their platter.

Fuck, isn’t this the second or third time I’ve compared bands to different foods? I should be a fat-ass at that rate. Anyways, what was said holds true. This stuff is good and worth the purchase. Maybe multiple listens, even. If you want to know a couple stand out tracks, they are “My burden”, “Scars of loss”, “Cycle of abuse”. “Open for wounds” fails with it’s utterly laughable croaky voice, but that’s about the biggest failure you’ll encounter on the album, and it’s at the very end.

- Information
- Released: 2009
- Label: Self-released
- Website: www.blood-stained.com
- Band
- Antti Ström: vocals
- Tero Luukkonen: guitar
- Jari Solismaa: guitar
- Eetu Blomqvist: bass
- Ville Juvonen: drums

- Tracklist
- 01. My burden
- 02. Cycle of abuse
- 03. MediSin
- 04. Disfigure
- 05. Scars of loss
- 06. Hangover song
- 07. The magical disappearing track (I’m sure it’s good, too)
- 08. When the masochist smiles
- 09. Infected
- 10. Open for wounds