Blood Punk, the third album from Copenhagen-based BIG MESS is released today and we’restoked to give you its first full listen, along with the first hand commentary about each and every track! The new offering sees the band bulding up the melodiousness and the way they balance and embody various contrasts and energizing hooks is nothing short of entertaining!
Here’s what the band had to say about this wicked release:
While the darker themes spread throughout – as a whole the album’s a celebration. Of friendship, love, playing music and of the music that we love, whether that is punk rock, power pop or death metal.
The album was recorded during a time when it was extra fun to play in Big Mess, and we wanted it to reflect that. All ballads and slow songs have been scrapped and all unnecessary parts and repetitions eliminated.
We’ve attempted to make the songs even more catchy than our previous ones, and haven’t been afraid of traditional pop melodies and chord progressions. Then we’ve added enough details to make it interesting – and of course played at a much higher speed and ferocity than is associated with pop music.
We kick ass, you sing along.
Tour Dates:
10/24-2019 Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark, supporting Rebecca Lou
11/08-2019 Loppen, Copenhagen, Denmark, w/ support TBA
12/12-2019 Kulturstationen, Vanløse, Denmark, w/ Orcas, Myreskær
Track by track breakdown:
SHADOWS
We open the album with a quick banger with lots of annoying breaks. See if you can guess what the backwards intro is a tribute to.
BLOOD PUNK
Lead single, title track and kind of a mission statement. Melodic mid-tempo punk rock with some lyrical nods to death metal put in a totally different context.
LEATHER JACKET WEATHER
Second single and probably the most immediately catchy song on here, but also one of the fastest. Lyrics about just feeling nice and what the title suggests.
SPECIAL SOMEONE
Third single – keeping things accessible and front-loaded of course, hehe. Classic Big Mess pop punk-banger with some melancholy in there.
SHORT ATTENTION SPAN
This album consciously consists strictly of short and fast songs, and should be fun to play and listen to all the way through. This song is partly about that, but also hints that not everything should be taken at face value. Something that appears silly often says more than something with a forced ”depth”.
TRUST NO ONE
Probably the oldest song on the record, and you can tell that this one has a bit more of the darkness from the last album left in it. Still a nice little bouncy and melodic ditty, though.
BORN TO BE DISEMBOWELLED
A blastbeat!! Otherwise a pretty straight up punk rock song with some nice bass in the verses, but we couldn’t resist that middle bit.
PERSONAL POLITICS
Slowest song on the album with slight hints of 60’s pop or something like that. With nice and loud guitars, of course. Ends up sounding a bit like Weezer, if they had still been good.
SOMEBODY/SOMEONE
This could have been a classic rock’n’roll song if we hadn’t played it too fast. One of our absolute favorites to play, and it’s fun to hear Mike B. Stial sing in that lower crooner-register.
IN THE LAP OF THE MOOSE
Musically this goes from kind of boogiewoogie-rock music played pretty fast to even faster sort of crossover thrash for a second. About friendship and rocking out, but taking care of each other. In life, not a moshpit kind-of-way.
BURIED UNDER CHERRIES
Closest we’ve gotten so far to a straight hardcore punk track. With some added oi-flavor for extra stupidity.
SING ABOUT YOUR ALLERGIES
The one and only song that cracks the 2 minute mark, and it even goes way beyond that! A bit of late 80’s SST-style rock added to the mix demands some more space for the guitar.
Another friendship song. Bye bye!
More about the record:
On Blood Punk the listener is confronted by a band who’s trying to detach themselves from the melancholic gloominess which has been so essential to their earlier albums – especially Try To Enjoy It from 2017. Rather than allow themselves – and the listener – to dwell in the dark, Blood Punk seeks to excite a feeling of uplifted recklessness in their audience. But then again – would it really be Big Mess if there wasn’t a trace of darkness to be found on their new album?
Of course there’s bound to be some of the gloom from our earlier stuff on Blood Punk . But the overall vibe is meant to be joyous – and the songs dealing with some of the heavier themes, take “ Shadows ” as an example, is meant to be a journey-like experience with some kind of light on the other side… instead of just staying in the dark.
One of the essential struggles, while working on the new record, has been to take themselves a bit less seriously. Big Mess has sought to do away with the feeling of pretentiousness which is so often – and maybe always have been – a part of the heavier music scenes. One could easily think that it might be a sort of ironic pursuit – but the truth is quite the opposite.
The inspiration for Blood Punk has been coming from somewhat different sources than on the two earlier albums. On many of the new tracks it becomes clear that Big Mess has been seeking guidance from classic melodic punk icons such as The Misfits , Cock Sparrer and The Ramones – all of which, as the band puts it, “aren’t afraid of the crowd singing along – while still kicking some serious ass.”
But, aside from the rather classic punk inspiration on Blood Punk , there’s still much more to it than that. Death Metal and Power Pop are two of the genres – and possibly the most clearly traceable – which serve as both musical and spiritual inspiration on this, the third album to be released by Big Mess .
The project has been to take the ‘Rush’, one of the unmistakably essential ingredients of Punk and Power Pop , condense and intensify it, and then channel it.
The more melodic, tighter and often pop-ish compositions on the upcoming record has already started to catch on. Especially “ Leather Jacket Weather ”, which was released as the second and latest single, has been picked up by Danish listeners and has even found its’ way to the Norwegian national radio station P3.
