Raindance - New Blood

After a day tinged with frustration, I feel like something heavy. Sticking to my recent hardcore theme, I've decided to give Raindance's 2012 EP New Blood a spin. Okay,  so it's not a new record, but it's another one that I've overlooked. Raindance formed in early 2011 and have gone onto self-release a digital EP as well as release two previous 7", including one with Belgian hardcore band Allocation. New Blood was released on vinyl and digitally via Animal Style Records.

Tracklist:-

1. Bottle Throated Kings
2. Black Lungs
3. Dine With The Devil
4. To Hell With Them
5. Bloodlust
6. Heaven Knows No Hollow Road

The opening bars of Bottle Throated Kings brings to mind early Stretch Armstrong and strangely Deftones, in the clean singing anyway. It’s a slow burner with some dramatic clean leads but bursts into life half-way through. There’s tonnes of energy and negative sentiment that gives Raindance an edge. They flit between straight-up hardcore and off-kilter rhythms, while choosing to bridge the gaps between songs with electronic beats to keep the flow going. The coarsely screamed vocals herald in Black Lungs. It’s a mid-paced beast of a song, yet strangely it’s also accessible in a menacing kind of way. Raindance are one of a new breed of US hardcore bands that take the flair of rock n roll and splice it together with driving hardcore guitars and sludge-inspired drums. The fact that they do control their pace makes the music more crushing to the ear.

They do off-kilter experimentalism well too. Dine With The Devil features some skittish time-signatures in places. The lyrics are bilious and they are delivered with a clean sincerity. My favourite track for sheer catchiness is To Hell With Them. The riffs are class and the double bass nestled in the background keeps things on the right side of heavy.  Raindance seem to get more musical as the plough through New Blood, as Bloodlust demonstrates. They manage to incorporate twin guitar melodies and clean vocal harmonies into the song, alongside some atonal breakdown-style riff and some screams that are close to black metal. It gets seriously head-spinning in the middle before there’s a instrumental section that sounds all Korn. They’re certainly not afraid to let thing flow. It all ends in glorious fashion with Heaven Knows No Hollow Road, which seems to pull together everything that is good about Raindance and switches it up a gear or three. Goddamn, this stuff is really infectious!

If like me, you've missed out on Raindance up until now, you can listen to the whole of New Blood via Animal Style Records below:-


You can buy New Blood both digitally and on vinyl via the above Bandcamp page.

Alternatively, you can pick it up via No Sleep Records who run the Animal Style Records webstore here - https://store.nosleeprecords.com/animalstyle.

Raindance Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/RaindanceHC
Animal Style Records Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/animalstylerecords