If the Eastlake, Ohio, duo Bibilic Blood have proven anything about themselves over the last two-plus years since the self-release of their Z’Ha’Doom debut, it’s that they’re totally fucked. Drummer/guitarist/graphic artist Scott “Wizard” Stearns and bassist/vocalist Suzy Psycho have donned capital-d Deranged as their aesthetic, and on their third album, Blood Butterfly (also self-released), they give their most “refined” take on that process yet – with “refined” in quotes because Bibilic Blood’s primal riffing and wailing is so lo-fi that in parts it seems to barely be there. Though that’s proven to be on purpose throughout this and last year’s Pale Face Destroyer (review here), they carry the feel so convincingly as to be genuinely unsettling. The main difference between Blood Butterfly and its preceding installments is in a more distilled feel. Here the songs are shorter, Stearns and Psycho working in two more tracks into a runtime still a minute shorter than that of Pale Face Destroyer, and though I’d hardly thought it possible, Bibilic Blood seem to be becoming even more rudimentary as they develop creatively. As much of their energy here seems to be in deconstructing song structures, they’re simultaneously building creative patterns in which they work. Still, the primary element at work in Blood Butterfly is how completely fucked up it sounds.

More even than on their last outing, however, Bibilic Blood turn that fucked-upness into a wash of malevolent psychedelia, accomplishing through different means what Midwestern black metal has done for its genre. The production on Blood Butterfly is beyond demo raw, but over the course of their to-date trilogy, that’s become almost as much a part of the style as Stearns’ riffs and Psycho’s deep-mixed wails. Were she screaming, Bibilic Blood might veer into sludge territory, and given Stearns’ past or ongoing tenure in Sollubi, Fistula, Ultralord, Morbid Wizard and others, that influence is bound to be present, but Blood Butterfly is geared toward something more definitively horror-based, and the 13 tracks are beginning to expand the formula. Psycho’s vocals are layered on “Black Star,” and later cut “Spider Guts” (the longest on the album at 5:02) devolves into noise before a guitar-led solo jam that’s Blood Butterfly’s most outwardly psychedelic stretch, perhaps rivaled by the earlier 2:19 instrumental “Acid Eyes.” The growth is subtle, and you have to wade through the intended muck of the recording to get to it, but it’s there. “Black Star” displays some burgeoning complexity in its interweaving layers of guitar and bass (I don’t mention the solo section at the beginning of that song only because it sounds like it might be sampled; if not, it also certainly supports the argument in favor of development on the part of the band). As Bibilic Blood becoming increasingly aware of the sonic field they’re working in, they can only progress further within it.

A few standout cuts also provide balancing counterpoint to the overall murky oppression of the album. “Scream” is under two and a half minutes, but has one of  Blood Butterfly’s most distinguishable and memorable riffs, and the cover of The Doors’ “Five to One,” here named numerically as “521,” is largely unrecognizable but for the rhythm of the vocal cadence, which comes directly from the original and rests – somehow fittingly for Bibilic Blood – just off time with Stearns’ drums. Once you realize what you’re hearing, however, the experience becomes that much more surreal, and as much as songs like “Into the Evil Light” and “Centauri” test the limits of aural endurance, they’re also touching on cult doom stylistically and made even stronger within that context by the psychedelic push of the guitar. Stearns and Psycho have at this point developed Bibilic Blood as a concept and are beginning now to mold it into a terrifying vision of disturbing and bleak experimentalism. Added noise and synth elements on songs like the aforementioned “Spider Guts” and “Down” act as potential avenues for future progression, and Blood Butterfly’s closing title-track leaves one with the impression that wherever the duo decide to take their sound from here, there’s no getting away from the nightmarish hellscape their material creates, which continues to be as fascinating as it is abrasive.

Bibilic Blood’s website

Bibilic Blood on Ye Olde MySpace

 

Tags: Bibilic Blood, Eastlake, Ohio, Unsigned bands

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 21st, 2011 at 2:15 pm and is filed under Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.