Written by: Dave Cantrell

When it first starts, with a percussive aggressive flash of howling noise on a track called “Cystic,” all I think I’ll end up saying about this record is summed up in that wonderfully succinct Hobbesian phrase ‘nasty, brutish, and short.’ But then the vocal steps in, singing from the relatively sanguine rafters a bit like Mark Gardener in Ride’s earlier, more primordial days, and, perhaps most importantly, it brings the bass melody with it (which makes sense as both are in the form of Preston Maddox), and soon enough the gust in which we’d begun has suddenly been shaped into an impressive and thunderously melodic wall of soundwaves that indeed swirls from ear to cerebrum like the best wind that’s ever knocked you sideways. And while it’s true that the intensity never effectively wavers and it’s all assault nearly all the time – in this iteration Bloody Knives now have two synth players (Ritch Napierkowski and Martin McCreadie) and everyone save new guitarist Jack O’Hara has access to those or samplers – I must say the interplay, though often devastating in its way, is remarkably deft regardless. If you’ve ever wondered what it might be like to actually feel soothed as the sheer force of a blast furnace hits you face on, we might have just the record for you.

Mining shoegaze post-punk and industrial as if no divider lines ever existed in the first place (and come to think of it…), I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This, over the course of eight tracks that all punish to varying degree, extracts blood while providing succor, a trick that’s not so much clever as merely a reflection of the band’s instincts being shrewdly balanced. Hence the icily-named “Blood Turns Cold” mitigates its giant sang froid sheet of sound with a keyboard yearn searching through the chaos for some elusive redemption, “Black Hole” gives away its gentler intentions from the outset, synths rising like the sun over a frigid day before evolving into the album’s most radio accessible 6½ minutes, which balance-wise is a smart move as it’s sandwiched between the unrelenting hurtle and pummel of “Reflection Lies” (in which Kevin shields himself from envy and fails) and “Static”‘s stratosphere-piercing beauty stab that could realistically soundtrack everyone’s view out the cabin window as their hypersonic flight climbs above the cloudbanks and heads off into the bright beyond.

Limited to only one brief stumble – the aptly (un)named meander “—–” that’s kind of a warm-up and coda forced to live together for a couple minutes until the stately change of “Poison Halo” arrives to escort the album back on to track – I Will Cut Your Heart Out For This, recently released by those noise pop savants over at Saint Marie, is a record that, in its refinements and its heart, is almost certainly incapable of following up on its title’s threat but you may want to keep sharp objects out of its reach anyway. Dangerously alluring, as they say.