This is the second solo album from the iconic Julie Christmas, who plays a vert individual brand of rock/metal.
A new solo album from one of the best artists in the business, a mere 14 years after her last one? Someone who has one of the most individual and simply fantastic singing voices ever, and has given us some classic albums from bands like Battle of Mice and Made out of Babies? An artist who even managed to elevate the pretty much untouchable Cult of Luna to unexpectedly higher levels of excellence on Mariner? New songs from her? Sign me up without hesitation.
Ridiculous and Full of Blood is the aforementioned album. It’s 42 minutes long, and it continues a stellar line of high quality material.
On Ridiculous and Full of Blood Julie Christmas is joined by a band that boasts membership of acts such as Candiria, Cult of Luna, KEN Mode, and Unsane, (among others), all of whom help to bring the Julie Christmas experience to glorious multidimensional life.
If you’re unfamiliar with Julie Christmas, then you’re in for a treat, albeit one that’s hard to define or to effectively describe with mere words. The genre tags for something like this are all over the shop, basically because this sounds like what it is, not like anyone else. On Bandcamp styles and genres such as noise rock, punk, shoegaze, and alt-pop are all mentioned, and the album has the tags of alternative, experimental, metal, prog, rock, and alternative metal. All of which should at least give a vague idea of what this sounds like. Sort of. Regardless, this just needs to be heard.
The songs are powerful, well-crafted, and harness the sort of emotive energies that many bands could kill for, yet still never achieve. The songs are varied and richly multicoloured, yet all fit together holistically into an idiosyncratic and unconventional whole. There’s so much to explore and unearth here, and every song has its own unique talents to showcase.
The occasional brutal outburst from the singer of Cult of Luna complements the main vocals well, but obviously it’s the inimitable voice of Julie Christmas herself that are the star of the show. The music doesn’t let the side down though and is masterfully wrought in its own right. Taken together the end result is remarkable. Julie Christmas’ vocals are as striking and as compelling as ever, and just as rich and multifaceted as you might expect.
Anything I write with my feeble words won’t adequately describe this record, so I’m just going to stop. You’ll just have to listen to it. You won’t regret it.
Julie Christmas is a singular artist with a string of notable releases, and this is no exception. Ridiculous and Full of Blood is quite simply a great album, and I cannot urge you enough to become absorbed in it.
Completely essential.
Wonderbox Metal 