Tuesday, July 16, 2002

-Blake from Vertonen (thanks!)
just forwarded this review from
"Vital" weekly:

BLOODYMINDED - TRUE CRIME
Together with a number of power-electronics acts from the U.S. and Italy, BLOODYMINDED certainly made a big impression on me when I put my ears into the raw "Sound of Sadism" compilation released on Crowd Control Activities a couple of years ago. The collection of innovative contributions on the compilation exceeded any other power-electronics compilations that I had listened to by lengths. Therefore it was quite a pleasure to receive this second full length album by Chicago's BLOODYMINDED. Originally formed during the summer of 1995, BLOODYMINDED were born after the dissolution of the legendary power-electronics act, Intrinsic Action, established by Mark Solotroff. Behind the sounds of BLOODYMINDED is then once again found Mark Solotroff together with Steve Marvin and Ed Knigge. Apart from these three composers of violence, there is guest appearances from other heavy-weights of the American power-electronics scene like Jonathan Canady of Deathpile and Deadworld and John Balistreri from Slogun. Also Japanese composer Akifumi Nakajima of Aube appears on some of the tracks. Drilling noises, screeching noises and rumbling noises penetrates and disappears in the turbulent wall of sound. Underneath the distorted maelstrom of sonic extremity lie two layers of human voices. Lowest is some subdued spoken words sounding like audio samples while the upper layer uses screaming vocals from various people of the project. More old-school than innovative in its expression the album does remind a little of earliest Whitehouse. And even though "True Crime" does represent a rather intense exploration into musical sickness, I do miss a little more variation in the overall sound picture. Nevertheless a good album from BLOODYMINDED supporting the fact that the American power-electronics scene is well worth watching. (NMP)