Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats
Blood Lust

"Quantum Leap"

Do you remember that TV show with the same title, where the protagonist traveled to past eras thanks to some kind of quantum contraption? Well, listening to “Blood Lust” by Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats will forcibly hurl you to Birmingham around 1970/71, perhaps in the bathroom at the Osbourne house.

Coming out of who knows which small town on the outskirts of England, Uncle Acid and company are simply the best doom band of these years, they put the latest Electric Wizard to shame, or rather, they perfectly manage to recreate that early hard rock + occult sound akin to a Z-grade horror movie + Albion decadence that I expected from the latest Electric Wizard.

An album that, in its driven derivativeness, mixes the aforementioned influences with such perfect balance, that it can easily rise to a classic of the genre.

The hallmarks of a classic are all there: filtered and chanting voice between Ozzy and Roky Erickson (the added value of the album is the sound + 60s that 70s), frightening Sabbath-like riffs, sometimes basic and garage organ, sometimes soaring and hard rock, 70's filmic imagery (stuff that you risk dreaming of Vincent Price cutting your leg with a saw).

Starting from “I'll Cut You Down” (and its vintage video), these guys string together a succession of tracks that are as familiar as they are fresh. The Sabbath-like assaults “Over And Over Again” and “I'm Here To Kill You”, the occult doom of “Curse In The Trees”, the almost prog of the long “Withered Hand of Evil”, and above all, the tribal and beautiful “Ritual Knife” and the perfect balance of “13 Candles”.

Not content, they even throw in a bonus track of acidic folk, a rotten cherry on an already spoiled cake. I believe it, they made it in 1971 at the latest!