(written by Islander)
Straight outta Boston come the death-metal/hardcore band Blood Tithe, the newest signing to Unbeaten Records, the long-running New York-based label started by Buddy Armstrong from Stigmata and Bulldog Courage.
They join a roster that includes Pure Bliss, All Out War, Edict, Cell, Bruiserweight, and Purgatory, among others, and have proved their mettle (and metal) on stage with such bands as Dying Fetus, Carnifex, Vomit Forth, Vital Remains, Kruelty, and Gulch. Their discography to date includes a demo, a pair of EPs, and a split last year with Misery Whip.
What’s on the horizon now via the Unbeaten label is a debut Blood Tithe album entitled Blood For The Starving God, and what we’ve got for you today is the video premiere of the record’s furious lead single, “The Martyr’s Last Prayer“.
Frontman Justin Whipple has stated (and it’s hard to deny): “If you don’t have a religious reverence for the words on the page, the Bible becomes the greatest horror story ever written.” That idea runs through the lyrics of “The Martyr’s Last Prayer“, which recount the slaughter of Christians in the sands of an amphitheater and the futility of their final prayer for salvation. The words end this way:
Why not descend from the heavens?
Why bear witness to children mauled by lions?
Mothers engulfed in flame
Fathers stripped of their flesh
Crucified as they rot aside the son of a God
It’s an ancient question: What kind of god would allow people, including its own most ardent worshippers, to be maimed and destroyed on a regular basis for millennia, apparently heedless of prayers for salvation? Of course theists have their answers, but it’s pretty clear that Blood Tithe ain’t buyin’ it.
Everything about the song is enraged, from Whipple‘s scorching, larynx-threatening screams and gritty roars to the searing riffage, which is both wave-like and blistering, both fraught and anguished, augmented by doses of skull-busting drumwork.
The band also lean into their hardcore inclinations to express their fury, slugging the listener in a mean-eyed, mosh-inducing beatdown laced with electrifying drumfills and howling hostility, and then they spin up the violence again with slashing chords and eviscerating tremolo’d fretwork.
The band continue relentlessly switching up the tempos and the moods, creating passages of dismal oppressiveness and swarming malice, but the intensity of the song never diminishes.
Turning to the excellent video, which was directed by Ryan Flynn and edited by Flynn and Jake Maclean, it provides a powerhouse representation of how explosive the band are on stage — but this setting is no conventional stage, but instead a chilling amphitheater of its own, haunted by bloodied specters.
Blood For The Starving God is set for release on September 19th. For more info about the album and how to get it, check out the links below.
We also want to alert folks that Blood Tithe will kick-off a weeklong run of shows with the Unbeaten Records Showcase on August 30th in Albany. The band will then join Fear The Dark (Maggot Stomp) for shows in Toronto, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Virginia, DC, and Brooklyn, culminating with a hometown show in Boston.
UNBEATEN RECORDS:
https://merchnow.com/collections/unbeaten-records
https://unbeatenrecords.bandcamp.com/
https://www.facebook.com/unbeatenrecords518
BLOOD TITHE:
https://www.instagram.com/bloodtithema/
https://www.facebook.com/BloodTitheMA/
https://bloodtithema.bandcamp.com/