by Justin Gaines
– Senior Columnist —
Swedish Heavy/Power Metal band Bloodbound released their first-ever live offering this year. It’s called One Night of Blood – Live at Masters of Rock MMXV, and in keeping with the AFM label’s other live releases this is no ordinary live release. In addition to the live album, One Night of Blood also features the full performance plus a handful of video clips on a DVD.
Czechoslovakia’s Masters of Rock festival is an ideal setting for a live release. Bloodbound had a closing set in front of close to 20,000 enthusiastic metalheads, and they turned in a very strong performance. The band has six studio albums under their belts at this point, but (wisely) they stuck mostly to material from the albums since vocalist Patrik Johansson joined the band. 2014’s Stormborn received the most attention, with roughly half of their set devoted to it. That’s a very strong release with anthems perfect for this setting, so that was another good call on Bloodbound’s part.
Bloodbound put on a fun, high-energy performance, and worked the stage and the crowd well. The crowd seemed pumped up too, giving the band a lot of love and joining in on the more anthemic tracks like “Moria,” “Nightmares From the Grave” and “Metalheads Unite.” The sound quality on this set is quite good, having been mastered by the great Jens Bogren. The video quality is not as good, unfortunately. On wide shots and mostly still scenes it’s fine, but there’s a blurring whenever there’s any sharp motion that makes the DVD hard to watch at times. If you like to pop in a live DVD for background music while you’re doing other things, that probably won’t be a problem. If you want to actively watch this though, it gets distracting pretty quickly.
If you’re a die-hard Bloodbound fan, One Night of Blood is a must-have release. It’s also a nice addition for fans of their more recent albums. The issues with the video knock down the overall rating a bit, but the audio portion is great and it’s still a solid release overall.
Genre: Power Metal, Heavy Metal
Lineup:
Patrik Johansson (v)
Tomas Olsson (g)
Henrik Olsson (g)
Anders Broman (b)
Pelle Akerlind (d)
Fredrik Bergh (k)
Track Listing:
1. Bloodtale
2. Iron Throne
3. When Demons Collide
4. In the Name of Metal
5. When the Kingdom Will Fall
6. Moria
7. Nightmares From the Grave
8. Metalheads Unite
9. When All Lights Fail
10. Book of the Dead
11. Metal Monster
12. Stormborn
13. Nosferatu
14. Nosferatu Symphony
Label: AFM Records
Website: www.bloodbound.se
Hardrock Haven Rating: 7/10
