{"id":100842,"date":"2025-05-14T13:08:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-14T13:08:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100842\/"},"modified":"2025-05-14T13:08:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-14T13:08:09","slug":"blood-monolith-the-calling-of-fire-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/100842\/","title":{"rendered":"Blood Monolith – The Calling of Fire Review"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Shortly after exiting Vastum<\/strong><\/a> in 2023, Shelby Lermo (Nails<\/strong><\/a>, Ulthar<\/strong><\/a>) moved cross country to Northern Virginia and enlisted the talents of guitarist Tommy Wall (Undeath<\/strong><\/a>) to partner in writing music for a new project, the goal being to \u2018create something even uglier, weirder, and more aggressive\u2019 than Vastum<\/strong>. To that end, Lermo also recruited Genocide Pact<\/strong><\/a> bassist Nolan and Brain Tourniquet<\/strong> drummer Aidan Tydings-Lynch to round out the lineup for his new-kids-on-the-death-metal-block band Blood Monolith <\/strong>and its Profound Lore Records debut, The Calling of Fire. Birthed of such heady death metal ancestry as they are, I didn\u2019t figure talent would be an issue. Still, I was curious about how Blood Monolith<\/strong> planned to separate itself from the great works of its members\u2019 main gigs and to stand out in a genre full of dense competition. Complete with very cool cover art courtesy of Rudimentary Peni<\/strong>\u2018s Nick Blinko, we\u2019ll see if The Calling of Fire\u2018s death metal is a towering inferno or a fizzling flame.<\/p>\n

Speedy and straightforward, The Calling of Fire relies more on velocitous brute force than dissonant atmospherics to make its point, which is one more weighty than weird. \u201cTrepanation Worm\u201d kicks the door down right from the start with a battery of blast beats, an arsenal of rapid-fire riffs and trilly runs, and Lermo\u2019s menacing death roars holding sway over it all. What that opener brings to bear is precisely what you can expect from the rest of Blood Monolith<\/strong>\u2018s debut. Comparatively speaking, there are vigorous nods to the past ala Cannibal Corpse<\/strong><\/a> (\u201cThe Owl In Daylight,\u201d \u201cSlaughter Garden\u201d) alongside odes that recognize a newer generation and give me Hyperdontia<\/strong><\/a>l vibes (\u201cPyroklesis\u201d). Laid against the success of this assembly\u2019s day jobs, Lermo\u2019s quest to unite his death metal Avengers and outdo Vastum<\/strong> may have found the man going too hard, as once The Calling of Fire settles into what it does, there\u2019s little else on the plate.<\/p>\n

\ufeffThe Calling Of Fire by BLOOD MONOLITH<\/a><\/p>\n

If one were to look up the definition of onslaught in some comparative death metal dictionary, a picture of Blood Monolith<\/strong>\u2018s The Calling of Fire may very well be pictured. In just under twenty-eight minutes, Blood Monolith<\/strong> invades your house, bashes your brains in with a cudgel, eats the desserts from the fridge, then kicks the dog and retreats before the cops can show up. Nearly void of desert oases, thirst-weary listeners can take respite in the occasional obscure film sound-bite and the two-punch combo \u201cApparatus\u201d and \u201cCleansing.\u201d The former\u2019s intro\u2014twenty-two seconds long\u2014teems with a get-to-sleep-fast-app ambiance, while the latter\u2019s outro\u2014all forty-two seconds of it\u2014repeats that synth-driven sleep-fast theme with low-volume guitar squeals and some static thrown in for diversity. Outside of these short-lived moments are riffs upon riffs upon solos upon blast beats upon guttural growls such that the whole begins to melt into a homogenous haze.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

Blood Monolith<\/strong>\u2018s spotlight shines brightest on Tidings-Lynch\u2019s excellent drumming and Lermo\u2019s ghastly growls, who also spits a bevy of phlegmy hawks-sans-the-tuahs across The Calling of Fire for fun. While this might sound like a strength, it\u2019s a flaw, and The Calling of Fire\u2018s loud mix is to blame. It is problematic because compression sucks a lot of the life from Lermo\u2019s and Wall\u2019s\u2014what I believe to be intricate and technical\u2014guitar work and renders nearly all of Nathan\u2019s low-end contributions unnoticeable. There are moments of guitar goodness, whether it be the Kerry King<\/strong>-like soloing in \u201d Prayer to Crom\u201d or the brief mid-paced passages of \u201cViscera Vobiscum,\u201d that I swear, grab a cadence and some guitar lines from Bloodbath<\/strong>\u2018s \u201cSoul Evisceration.\u201d But even these moments aren\u2019t enough to pull the overall effect out of the muck. <\/p>\n

Lermo\u2019s attempt to be uglier, weirder, and more aggressive than Vastum <\/strong>succeeds on aggression but little else. At first blush, The Calling of Fire feels like an in-your-face, full-on, balls-out death metal crusher; however, pushing play the fourth, fifth, and sixth time found me blurring everything together. There\u2019s promise here, don\u2019t get me wrong, and while I may be chastised for underrating Blood Monolith<\/strong>\u2018s debut, I stand behind my score. While it\u2019s not entirely unworthy of your time, it\u2019s also not landing on your year-end list, and certainly not mine. We\u2019ll have to wait and see how hot the fire of Blood Monolith<\/strong>\u2018s next adventure burns. <\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: 2.5\/5.0
DR<\/strong>: 6 | Format Reviewed<\/strong>: 320kbps mp3
Label<\/strong>: Profound Lore Records<\/a>
Website<\/strong>: Bandcamp<\/a>
Releases Worldwide<\/strong>: May 16th, 2025<\/p>\n

\n\tGive in to Your Anger:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Shortly after exiting Vastum in 2023, Shelby Lermo (Nails, Ulthar) moved cross country to Northern Virginia and enlisted…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":100843,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3936],"tags":[20843,743,46811,46812,46813,12936,77,46814,32546,269,46815,6080,6082,46816,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-100842","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-music","8":"tag-2-5","9":"tag-743","10":"tag-american-death-metal","11":"tag-blood-monolith","12":"tag-cannibal-corpse","13":"tag-death-metal","14":"tag-entertainment","15":"tag-hyperdontia","16":"tag-may25","17":"tag-music","18":"tag-profound-lore-records","19":"tag-review","20":"tag-reviews","21":"tag-the-calling-of-fire","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114506348142145737","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100842","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100842"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100842\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100842"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100842"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100842"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}