Review Summary: About as disturbing and revolting as actual dog's blood.
As a fan of Alexisonfire, it’s been pretty troubling to watch the band spiral into creative oblivion during the past decade. Starting with their phenomenal self-titled debut, Alexisonfire has slowly gotten worse and worse, to the point where their recent fourth album,
Old Crows/Young Cardinals, was a complete and total snoozefest. With the release of their newest effort,
Dog’s Blood, the band claims that the EP is a collection of “experimental” tracks that were left of their full-lengths because the songs departed too far from the band’s established sound. Excited that the band might get out of their rut, I anticipated the release of
Dog’s Blood, but sadly, the band still continues to decline, and this is, by far, their worse release yet.
Dog’s Blood opens with the EP’s eponymous song, and right away I notice the oddly dry production: the guitars really lack power with their thin sound, and the drums seem to snap and pop rather than boom and punch, which successfully sucks all the energy out of the song. Another thing I notice is George’s ever declining scream: he seems to continue his strange wet barking approach that just comes off as agitating more often than not. The song is not a total loss, however, as Dallas comes in for a brief, satisfying middle section after the extremely generic intro riff coasts for a good two minutes. The outro is a decent affair, featuring a more breathable riff, but the combination of George, the production and some strange buzzing noise (the bass guitar?) ruins the enjoyment of the song completely.
Sadly, the rest of
Dog’s Blood is nothing to get excited about. “Grey” features a bouncy 6/8 riff, but George’s vocals are absolutely atrocious and we get very little in the ways of meaningful variation or progression. “Black as Jet” races out of the gate with a decent riff only to spiral into some sad progression while the song loses all of it’s focus, and it just comes off sounding like an underdeveloped idea. Lastly, “Vex” is an instrumental track, which saves us the torment of George, but the ugly production and general lack of creative riffs does the track absolutely zero favours.
Carrying four absolutely terrible songs, Alexisonfire’s
Dog’s Blood EP is not only the band’s weakest effort to date, but easily one of the worst efforts I’ve ever heard from the genre. Featuring a dry, bland production, atrocious vocals, generic song ideas and clumsy progressions,
Dog’s Blood is a crossroads in the band’s discography: they can either turn it around from this point on and somehow crawl out of the rut they’ve dug themselves in, or they continue to circle drain by releasing half-hearted, dull and exhausted garbage. I can’t really say which direction the band is headed in, but I do know that fans of the band’s previous work, pre-Crisis, should avoid this one at all costs.
