Review Summary: What if Bathory collaborated with Devo?
Bridge Of Sacrifice is the sort of album that’s weird as hell regardless of the angle you approach it from. It grinds Powerplant’s established synth punk into a genre blend of black metal and deathrock, playing out like what it would presumably sound like if Bathory ever collaborated with Devo. It’s no doubt one of the strangest blackened fusions I’ve run into and feels like it came out of left field even with the band’s eclectic tendencies.
By the powers of disorienting atmosphere and sheer mozzarella stick energy, the cacophonous combination ends up working better than it honestly should. There’s a real push and pull to the performances as infernal guitars and blast beats run rampant alongside dance breaks and swelling synths while the vocals offer a mix of nasally croons and thematic rasps. The raw production bridges the various elements by emphasizing a live feel that encourages a sense of spontaneity while ensuring that the clashes are at least coherent.
The songwriting is similarly chaotic as the eleven tracks cover quite a bit of variety and mood fluctuations in fast-paced fashion. “Burning Cross” staves off its jagged riffs its snotty cleans and a bouncy rhythm that persists through the raspy growls and vampiric synths that set in on “Florida.” The times when the band manages to take a breath offer their own sort of compelling weirdness between the bass-slinging industrial on “Transactions,” the Mark Lanegan-esque gothic country of “The Fork,” the creepy sway on “Bad Moon Motel.”
Overall, Bridge Of Sacrifice is an entertaining effort whose clashes are contradictory yet complementary. It’s undoubtedly an acquired taste for how abrasive and haphazard the execution can often be yet there’s always a sense of fun at play and the songs are well-written once one is acclimated. It’s a lot to take in yet the pacing is breezy enough to make those repeat listens worth exploring. Recommended to anybody seeking out extra weirdness in their black metal or a harsher take on egg punk.
