Band : BloodTrial
Album title : Die Or Drown
Label : Chung King Records
Distributor : Shield Recordings
Release date : May 2010
Release : Mini-CD

Heerlen, Holland, 2005: from the ashes of several local bands, the aggressive in-your-face Hardcore band BloodTrial is formed, styling itself to the likes of Throwdown, Hatebreed and Terror. After some changes (the last one in late 2008, early 2009, when the bass player left due to strictly personal reasons) the line-up stabilized onto lead singer Bart van de Kleut (gets frequent “gang” backings from the others), guitarist Arle Fleuren, bassist Yoni op den Kamp (formerly of Mathcore outfit The Eurydice Tragedy), and drummer Lukas Strating, and as times passed on the unit came to use other musical styles as well as Hardcore, pushed by their love for all things heavy.

Growing towards their latest release, the band issued their This Hate Burns Deep demo in 2006, and followed that up with a label debut in the form of a split release with Rising Tide on the Villa Optima Records imprint in 2008. Along the way, as becomes a good Hardcore-band-with-a-message, the guys frequently brought their music to the audiences, some done in direct support to the likes of Madball, Born From Pain, Walls Of Jericho, Full Blown Chaos, First Blood, Liar, Death Before Dishonor, and more recently Human Demise...to name but a few.

Although now also displaying elements of from the more extreme forms of Metal in their music, the band remains Hardcore in their lyrics, taking a collective stand as one with their critical viewpoint on the world's current events. From the bio: “Politically aware and proud to discuss the rights and wrongs of a world gone wrong and growing in despair as each day passes, BloodTrial finds themselves as a lone voice still confronting the issues that affect one and all, when many bands have seemed to neglect what matters.”! Bold statement, but not quite correct...since there's still plenty of bands out there shouting at the top of their voice to reveal the ugliness of business men and politicians (sadly enough, they are often the same...in my mind, there can only come some improvement, once a global-wide law is accepted that politicians, whom after all find themselves paid by the People, are no longer allowed to be part of any industry, in whatever capacity, be that one of a CEO, or honorary board member...a politician is supposed to work fór the People, and as soon as he's involved in Industry, he's no longer working to the benefit of those he's supposed to represent...in fact, a lot of the time he's merely working to his own benefit!).

Okay, that little banter aside (I'm sure the band itself can appreciate this little side-comment, though) I have to say something more about the mini-album, right? Well, You can listen to a 5-some of tracks (2 of which from this 6-tracker) at myspace.com/bloodtrial, and that should give you a darn good idea of what this band is about! Nice detail: in album opener “This Dark Cycle” (which is really a sample – from some movie, I guess – over which the band put some nice music with rising tensions) a radio announcer urges his listeners to stick their heads out of the window and shout “I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not gonna take this anymore!” as a reaction to the things going wrong in their country (the movie apparently set in an era with economic depression and worklessness)...and in the closing moments of album closer “Consequences” (with the music fading out), you actually get that part of the movie where people do exactly thàt. Beautiful touch, that!

Belgian Hardcore fans whom saw the band play at Koersel's Club 9 may already have noticed the band is now a 5-piece with the addition of a second guitarist. The new guy is Christoph Semmling, formerly of the recently deceased German Hardcore act Cheap Thrills. First upcoming chance for Dutch Hardcore fans to see him play will be at Zaandam's De Kade, as support to the likes of Terror, Everytime I Die, Down To Nothing and the other bands that are part of the Hell On Earth Tour! Okay, so these 6 songs only last a nice 17 minutes...that won't hold me back from adding Die Or Drown to my year-lists!

98/100

Tony.