Bad Blood

Synopsis

By the time Ice had reconstituted, Martin and Broadrick's ear had taken in hip-hop as a key influence, resulting in a slew of guest MCs taking a bow throughout Bad Blood. Not every vocalist comes from that particular background, it should be noted; indeed, on half the tracks none other than Einsturzende Neubaten's Blixa Bargeld participates! Martin's expected roaring isn't present much here -- there's little distortion or stretched out syllables, while a spoken/sung style often takes the fore, cutting in, out and around the guest turns. Tricky if anything is the role model for Martin, at least to an extent. DJ Vadim crops up on two tracks as well, while Scott Harding contributes beats and loops throughout, but for all the various cameos the core of Ice remains remarkably stable. If there's a musical change, though, it's stripping back Broadrick's punishing guitars in favor of the rasped and whispered singing and MC work. Rather than blaring like a monster, Broadrick keeps the same slow drone pace on his chosen instrument but buries and echoes it heavily, lurking like a threat rather than just plain rampaging. The end result sounds a bit like Ice-goes-trip-hop, for better or worse, specifically in the Massive Attack vein of looming, unsettled doom, though without the weirdly pretty and human edge that leavens the Bristol collective's work. The downside is that there's not really much variety on Bad Blood; distorted crunches and beats mixed with slightly cleaner percussion, interwoven vocals calling for any number of potential apocalypses, random off-kilter samples from who knows where treated with dub echo. However, the lack of variety on Under the Skin wasn't a real problem, and, to their credit, Martin and Broadrick aren't simply repeating that album here. ~ Ned Raggett