Band: Blood Freak
Title: Mindscraper
Label: Willowtip
Distribution: Hammerheart Records
Release date: June 20th 2011
Review: CD

If you like your meat the bloodiest way, this album must be the ultimate background soundtrack to enjoy fresh body parts, still warm from partly being alive yet…

I’m not sure whether this band is named after 1972’s (cult) horror movie Blood Freak (Grinter/Hawks), yet it won’t surprise me, honestly.

Anyway, Portland (1), Oregon’s Blood Freak recorded this album at the Midnight Mania Studio (forming member Maniac Neil (2) took care of the engineering), and the mastering duties were done by nobody else but Grind-master Scott Hull (3) himself.
[(1) Neil moved to California for a while to search for permanent members, yet he completed the line-up after he returned to Portland]
[(2) he started this band after he left Frightmare]
[(3) think: Withered, Sunn O))), Kylesa, Neuraxis, Unearthly Trance, Circle Of Dead Children and many, many more]

Mindscraper lasts for three quarters of an hour and starts with a stupid intro (Psychoplasmics), a collage of, I guess, horror movie samples and some instrumental gigging. Yet luckily, as from Merchants Of Sleaze on, Blood Freak show its true face. Merchants Of Sleaze is Old School Grind/Death, the gore and splattering way. It contains all necessary ingredients: dual vocals (deep and filthy grunts versus gurgling screams), a massive yet rough sound, some changes in tempo and structure, rattling drum patterns and almost funky bass lines, a handful of cutting and fiery solos, brutal riffs, and gore lyrics. Sleeping In Hell is (even) more brutal, probably because of the faster tempo, yet it exhales a same-minded early years-spirit. Impetigo is an undeniable influence, but bands like Repulsion, Splatterhouse, Exhumed, Mortician, Macabre, Impaled or Phobia might have been an important source of inspiration as well. However, Blood Freak never reach the freaky level of those acts, unfortunately, even though I do enjoy this recording.
I need to mention the slow parts as well. Sometimes Blood Freak decelerate totally, adding a primordial Old School Doom-Death Metal approach on top of, even then, a grinding groove, covered in pus, slime and mucus.

Bon appetite!

75/100

Ivan Tibos.