Blessings – Blodsträngen (Review)

This is the third album from Blessings, a Swedish post-hardcore band.

Four years after Biskopskniven made it’s way onto my 2021 end of year list, Blessings are back, with the 41-minute Blodsträngen. Once again we’re gifted with an amalgam of hardcore, noise rock, post-metal, and sludge, giving rise to a post-hardcore experience that’s remarkable.

Blodsträngen is the sound of a band that are increasingly wrapped up ina  world of their own creation – dissonant, experimental, and idiosyncratic. Blessings are a creative bunch, and these new songs showcase their ever more expansive style wonderfully. Blessings never neglect the need for actual songs though. No matter what they throw in, there’s a firm foundation of structure, dynamics, feeling, and mood. The various influences that have gone into the making of this album are similar to that of its predecessor, although there is also a greater post-metal feel to the songs.

Blessings are becoming increasingly percussive. Whereas most bands pay lip service to the drums, on Blodsträngen the percussion is fully rendered in depth and nuance. This was a notable feature of Bishopskniven, but here this aspect of the music has been developed further. Building layers upon layers on top of this are a range of ideas and sounds. Synths are used extensively, and effectively. There’s a choice selection of jagged riffs and atypical guitars, fleshing out the songs with distorted colour that’s very moreish. The vocals cover a lot of different stylistic bases, and all are performed well.

This is a highly textured collection of tracks. They’re well-written and well-realised, showcasing a band who have refined their individuality to the point that Blodsträngen now essentially sounds like Blessings more than anyone else. Yes, there are valid reference points to other acts – there always are with any band, (here it would roughly be a mix of At the Drive In, Converge, Cult of Luna, Kowloon Walled City, Mastodon, and Neurosis) – but the band’s musical personality manifests itself in more expressive and well-formed ways than ever.

Blessings have used all of their musical assets and creative ideas and sounds to produce a record that’s extremely compelling and enjoyable. Blodsträngen is an exemplar of immersive worldbuilding, powered by sonic curiosity and experimental heaviness. Blodsträngen is richly atmospheric, crushingly heavy, vividly evocative, harshly barbed, intensely intimate, perversely catchy, absorbingly resistant to being over-analysed, and much else. It is the successor to Bishopskniven that I didn’t properly know I needed – it’s even more multifaceted and rewarding.

This is a great album from a great band, it’s as simple as that. I expected good things from Blodsträngen, and it has more than delivered.

Essential listening.