Blood Star Sighting

One of my more anticipated releases for this year has to have been the Blood Star LP. I first heard of the band when a friend turned me on to their 7 inch back in 2020. That record came from out of nowhere, but it quickly became a fav for the year. Even with only two songs, that Blood Star 7 inch still shot to number two on my ranking for the year. It was that good.

Even though I was very much looking forward to First Sighting, I still wasn't too hyped on new releases, so the record went untouched for months after it arrived. I was too preoccupied with other music, so the new Blood Star was going to have to wait until the time was right. Apparently that right time didn't kick in until we were approaching the end of the year and I needed to try to get all my new 2023 records up on the blog before we roll into the new year (yeah, I'm not sure if I'm still going to be able to do that).

Once I did finally check it out though... FUCK, this is so good. Tradition metal and the vocals of Madeline Smith fit this sound perfectly. No doubt, Blood Star is going to be high on my ranking again this year.

I wasn't very happy with how the colored vinyl looked for the 7 inch and I expeced the same with the LP, so when preorders went up and I saw that the more limited press was on black vinyl, I figured that's the way that I'd go. Turns out that the colored vinyl didn't look as terrible as I'd expected and given, the chance to do it over again, I may have made a different decision. 300 pressed on black.

Fear The Blood Star

I'm usually reluctant when people make recommendations for me to check out new bands. There are a small handful of people that I trust completely, and if they think that I'll like it, chances are they will be right...but for the most part I tend to be a bit skeptical when someone suggests that I check something out.

When my friend, Jeff, sent me a link to listen to a band called Blood Star, I didn't have high expectations. Now Jeff has great taste when it comes to 70's and early 80's metal, but he doesn't really bother with new bands, so I didn't expect much with this EP.

Holy shit. Blood Star are straight up traditional heavy metal, and I can't get enough of these two songs. Featuring one of the guitarists from Visigoth and a female singer, this EP is catchy as hell, and Tortured Earth may be my favorite song of this year.

The packaging for this 7 inch looks great. The cover artwork, colored vinyl and the OBI strip are all fantastic. "Tortured Galaxy" colored vinyl is limited to 500.