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BLOOD OF HEROES, THE  Remain  CD   (Ohm Resistance)   14.98
Remain IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

When we picked up the debut album from The Blood Of Heroes earlier this year, I was floored by it's sinister, apocalyptic mix of breakcore, drum n' bass, and industrial metal, all assembled into something that seemed to come more from dubstep and raggacore than the heavy avant pedigree that the band boasts. But boy was that disc heavy, featuring Justin Broadrick and Bill Laswell in what I believe is their first direct musical collaboration since the two hooked up on Painkiller's mighty dub-metal Ep Buried Secrets. The industrial doom-laden dubstep / breakcore that this new ensemble (which also includes Dr. Israel, Enduser, and Submerged as regular cohorts) seemed to lend itself to an endless array of sonic permutations orbiting the band's core sound of Godflesh-style riffage fused with futuristic drum n' bass and mutant breaks, and that malleability is exercised widely on this follow-up/companion piece to the debut, the eight-song remix collection Remain.

First up, the Joel Hamilton/Submerged remix of "Descend Destroy" drapes the apocalyptic raggacore in lush new guitar draperies, the dreamy guitar melody lilting over a monstrous buzzing bass line while hyperkinetic rhythms and crushing metallic chug wobble underneath. On Enduser's reworking of the title track, the melodic electronic elements are drawn out, with prominent keyboard lines echoing across mechanized boom-bap while Broadrick lays down his lush, crushing melodic riffage, transforming the music into skittering junglist dreamsludge. More ominous sounding is D�lek's remix of "Chains", stripping it down to just a bare backbone of dubby break beats and fluttering bass. Justin Broadrick does his own remix of "Remain", giving it his droning, narcotized Jesu touch and adding skittery, paranoid break beats that scuttle beneath his moaning melodic vocals and grinding detuned riffage, later emerging into glorious heavenly ambience. Bill Laswell amplifies "Salute To the Jugger" into a pounding evil dub trance, and Kuma (aka Simon Fug�re) turns "Wounds Against Wounds" into a grim apocalyptic dub-reggae jam with amplified keening high end guitar and Dr. Israel's sinister toasting brought into starker focus. "Bound" is given another ultra-metallic remix by Submerged, and sounds almost exactly like a Jesu track, albeit a Jesu song with spaced out dancehall toasting; it's followed by a rehearsal version of "Remain", and the last track is a remix of "Transcendent" by the group Gator Bait Ten (which features Ted Parsons of Swans/Prong/Jesu, Simon Smerdon aka Mothboy, Kurt Gluck aka Submerged), an ambient reworking with dark mournful strings and woodwinds, choral drones, and distant, obfuscated rhythmic pulses all materializing in this new version.

The disc comes in a digipack that features more of Khomatech's fantastic The Blood Of Heroes inspired artwork.


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