��With their albums being released on the Ohm Resistance label, some have made the mistake of assuming that Blood Of Heroes was another extreme drum n' bass influenced project along the lines of flagship artist Submerged, or Imaginary Forces. While drum n' bass is obviously a part of this bands DNA, Blood Of Heroes has defied easy categorization across all of their releases, and have offered a sound that is remarkably heavy and apocalyptic in tone for something that has been largely ignored by the metal crowd. This gang of post-nuke dub/metal/jungle mutants layer their complex, heavily rhythmic songs in some vicious experimental drum n' bass movements on their latest album The Waking Nightmare, but there's just as much crushing down-tuned guitar and bellicose blackened shrieks to be found here as well. A sorta-supergroup that spans the realms of avant-metal and extreme electronic music, Blood Of Heroes features the core lineup of Justin Broadrick of Godflesh / Jesu / Greymachine / Napalm Death / Final fame, dub artist Dr. Israel on vocals (who some of you may remember from his output on the seminal Wordsound label back in the 90s), and experimental drum n' bass producers Kurt Gluck (aka Submerged) and Lynn Standafer (aka Enduser). AS with their previous releases, the band brings in a bunch of additional musicians to flesh out their frenetic futuristic visions, which on Nightmare includes Mark Gregor Filip (Gator Bait Ten), Tony Maimone and Joel Hamilton (Battle Of Mice), drummer Bal�zs P�ndi (Metallic Taste Of Blood / Obake / Wormskull), and most surprisingly, Thomas Lindberg of Swedish death metal legends At The Gates, who appears on one of the songs to deliver his awesome sky-shredding vocals. The imagery and concepts are a continuation of the bands obsession with the cult 1989 post-apocalyptic film The Blood Of Heroes, the film's rich fictional culture providing much of the thematic grist for the band's skittering, grinding soundscapes and visions of a hostile, blasted, collapsed Earth. As someone who loved that flick when I was a kid, I definitely grooved on those ideas being set to the bands ferocious industrial metal/raggacore hybrid.

�� The band has created one of the most crushing amalgams of dubstep, drum n' bass, and industrial metal I've ever heard, a sound that has expanded and evolved even further on their second full-length album The Waking Nightmare. I'm not the first person to draw this comparison when describing the strange, often hallucinatory heaviness of The Bood Of Heroes, but on Nightmare, the band sounds more than ever like the perfect fusion of the dark, apocalyptic dubstep of The Bug and the mechanical grind of classic Godflesh, and man, there are some seriously heavy moments on this album. It features an even more complex and layered sound, blending together furious dancehall vocals and violent, twitchy drum n' bass with crushing metallic guitars and dystopian ambience. The complicated rhythms and zonked-out dancehall menace of "Piration" takes the heaviest dubstep and welds it to Broadrick's punishing down-tuned guitar crunch, combining that frenetic dancehall toasting and eerie electronic soundscape with intense, crushing industrial metal. Hoovering blown out black synths and bone-rattling grindcore guitars rumble beneath the skittering, paranoid movements of "Death Wish", and on "Everything Undone" and "Bronze And Brass", the guitarists combine grinding riffage with rich, chorus-drenched chords that wouldn't have been out of place on an 80's post-punk album, again mixing it up with those infectious, brutal industrial dancehall hooks and technoid drum n' bass.

�� Elsewhere on "Hecatomb", ghostly synths merge with stuttering, robotic drum n' bass grooves, and its here that we're suddenly met with the strained, agonized howl of guest singer Thomas Lindberg from At The Gates, his instantly recognizable scream giving the brutal breakcore a unique monstrous vibe. The liquid bass and gleaming hook on "The Last Forest" help to produce the album's most haunting track, cinematic synths and piano drifting over rumbling ultra-distorted drones, more of that Godfleshian crush and mechanized breakbeats, and "War" features some lush, intoxicating kosmische synth ambience that transforms into futuristic ragga-fueled trip-hop that has Broadrick delivering his ferocious roar over the fractured beatscape. Blastbeats make a brief appearance on the mostly instrumental "Towers Arise Underground", and there's a monstrous Streetcleaner groove on "Dogtown". "Only The Desert Endures" crafts more otherwordly beatscapes from the sounds of dombura, tribal rhythms, lush cinematic electronics and sheets of guitar drone, and closer "I Love You But I Chose Darkness" is a reworking of a previously released Submerged track that delivers one of the album's finest amalgams of brutal drum n' bass, soundtracky electronica and apocalyptic industrial metal. It's a stunning blend of styles that never feels forced, and breathes life into the band's strange dark futuristic universe, further fleshed out by Khomatech's amazing, eye-popping album art that depicts heavily tattooed and painted post-apocalyptic primitives and wasteland warriors throughout the album's full-color packaging

�� Available as both a gorgeous CD digipack package with a full color booklet, and limited-edition vinyl.