Album Review: Summer of Hate, Blood and Honey
As it’s drawn together by an overarching lushness of melody and a vinyl-minded warmth of sound that extends even to Pedro Lopes‘ snare drum, one would not accuse Portuguese psych rockers Summer of Hate‘s sound of lacking variety. Across the band’s second full-length and label-debut for Tee Pee Records, Blood and Honey, the Espinho-based six-piece tangle with ’60s pop, doom, shimmering shoegaze, Iberian folk and Middle Eastern sounds — the opening title-track and the finale “The Gospel (According to Summer of Hate)” have a bit of a goth infection, melodically — except that it isn’t a tangle at all. It’s a cogent, individual expression of purpose and songwriting, and from the outset of that same title-track, there is nowhere Summer of Hate go that they don’t either find or make into solid ground. Blood and Honey is the band’s follow-up to 2022’s Love is Dead, Long Live Love, and in its 48-minute/seven-track run, one finds disparate-seeming ambitions realized in pieces that work toward their own ends while unquestionably enriching the whole.
Vocalist Laura Calado and founding guitarist João Martins would seem to be the team leading the unit as regards songwriting, but with Xavier Valente and Ricardo Fonseca (also keys) on guitar, bassist Fábio Pereira, the aforementioned Lopes on drums, plus guest contributions from Thomas Attar (ex-Blaak Heat Shujaa), who produced the ‘Blood’ side, on second cut “El Saif” and guest percussion from Regina Faria, there is no want of persona throughout. And the breakdown into two sides, which isn’t even as it seems centerpiece “Mayura” — one of three longer inclusions with “Blood and Honey” and “The Gospel (According to Summer of Hate)”; they’re placed as landmarks along the way with two five-to-six-minute songs spaced between; none of it lacking substance or intent — ends the ‘Blood’ portion before the Rafael Silva-produced ‘Honey’ starts, may just owe its distinction to the shift in who recorded, but once you know, there is a perceptible shift as “Além” takes hold subsequent to the so-blown-out-it-that-in-another-context-it-would-be-black-metal crescendo and handclap finish of “Mayura” (they cover a lot of ground in that eight minutes, if you couldn’t tell), twisting into an organic wash that’s more ’80s than ’60s, more Duran Duran than Beatles, and catchy even in Portuguese for someone who doesn’t speak the language.
But even the turn from ‘Blood’ to ‘Honey’ — which moves into the penultimate “Joy” with an intro that had me wondering the first time on a blind listen if I was about to hear a cover of A-Ha‘s “Take on Me” (which no doubt Summer of Hate would nail) before the patiently-unfolding epic-strum expanse of “The Gospel (According to Summer of Hate)” rounds out — doesn’t necessarily interrupt the front-to-back fluidity that emerges from the moderated tempos, the melodies, and the noted warmth of tone. Summer of Hate aren’t pop, but they’re influenced by pop from across decades enough that my Northeastern ears can’t help but hear Type O Negative in the second half of “Blood and Honey” and the dreamy latter reaches of the closer — you’ll recall the Beatles-plus-Black–Sabbath formula there; it would seem to apply here as well, if only as part of the broader stylistic pastiche — and in “El Saif,” they speak to the history of Mediterranean psychedelia in the movement and scales employed, but Calado‘s voice ties the track to “Blood and Honey” just before, and here too, a hook helps. “El Saif,” immediately notable for its inflection in the guitar, is a big jump in physicality from the rolling chorusmaking of “Blood and Honey” as well, but it is executed artfully and in such a way as to make a statement early in the record that Summer of Hate aren’t going to be tied to a single idea or sound. Or if they are, they’re setting their own varied terms for what that means and how it manifests.
Thus is Blood and Honey often beautiful. It changes hue from moment to moment, but is never not rich with color, and as “Ashura” follows “El Saif,” some of that song’s Middle Easternism is answered in the guitar and rhythm, but as the second half unfurls, it’s as much about atmosphere as motion, and that leads into the foreboding start of “Mayura,” with more prominent bass and guitar pushed back in the mix for ambient effect behind the verse; a not-exactly-subtle-but-not-beating-you-over-the-head change and the beginning point of a build that happens creatively and smoothly as the tension mounts in the plunge of a chorus, “Chase me in circles/And tear me down/Chase me in circles/And wear me down,” and the memorable lines, “Hey, chase me around/And open every door in my house/Hey, what are you looking for/I’ve got nothing for you, nothing more.” They’re still a ways from the actual payoff at that point, which speaks to the whole side as much as its own progression, but the going is satisfying enough that when they let go into the drifting midsection, the distorted guitar that hits right at 5:37 after the quick stop is a clarion that immediately tells the listener ‘you have arrived.’ The rest of the song bears that out.
That’s a crucial moment of culmination, but upped a degree by “The Gospel (According to Summer of Hate),” which is the longest inclusion at nearly 10 minutes and caps Blood and Honey with an emotionality that reaches for authenticity like ’90s revivalism but is both working to a terrestrial structure (that is to say it’s played in a grounded manner) while being ethereal in its affect. There’s a plan, but one might be forgiven for closing ones eyes and just following along at that point in the album; the band make the going such an encompassing pleasure, after all. Perhaps most of everything, they underscore how much identity there is in their work — drawing influence from such a range of elements, it would’ve been easy for Summer of Hate to fall flat if the craft and effort weren’t there to draw their songs together — and just how much it is their own. I wouldn’t hazard to predict what they might do from here or when. I find myself genuinely unconcerned with these things while listening, and whatever else might eventually come or not, I’m just really happy this exists. Recommended.
