ALBUM REVIEW: Blood Is Blood – On Hollow Ground
Following their years of EPs, ON HOLLOW GROUND are making the leap into the world of LPs with their debut album Blood Is Blood, paying tribute to the scathing, riff-heavy elements of metalcore that experiments with playful influences of grime and hip-hop but can sometimes leave much to be desired. Put simply, this album has its hits and its misses, there’s a clear objective sound trying to be achieved, and for the most part, they hit the mark.
ON HOLLOW GROUND do a commendable job of pushing their metalcore sound into new boundaries. A lot of their tracks, People Never Learn and WMD (Wasteman Down), bombard you with vivacious riffs and devilish hooks that you can really sink your teeth into. It’s got that bouncy feeling of many early 2010-2013 metalcore tracks, taking pages from the likes of VEIL OF MAYA or EMMURE. There’s an overarching rough-around-the-edges feeling to their sound. It’s not your commercially friendly metalcore that can be churned out in a pop, it’s got a real gritting edge of character that makes it refreshingly fun.
Unclean vocals are another welcomed blessing to this album. Vocalist Jack Flynn exercises his phenomenal vocals with tracks like Our Lives, Blood Is Blood, and Broken that have a great range to them and don’t feel exasperatingly strained. Fans of early metalcore might appreciate his “bleugh” nods that are truly the cherry on top of this metalcore piece.
There are marvellously high expectations with title-tracks, and Blood Is Blood does not disappoint. The track is a ruthlessly raw, pounding track that creates a clean climax into the chorus and exemplifies Flynn’s astonishing vocal capabilities one again. There are very few words to describe a track so good without underselling it but this is absolutely a song you’d want to dive headfirst Into a mosh pit for.
The band exudes their love for all things hip-hop and grime in a fashionable manner, most of that time that is. Grime and metalcore arguably go hand in hand in modern times, both have become a political platform for musicians and acts as solace for those who feel outcasted or hold unrest with the state of today’s world. Shut Down pays a beautiful homage to grime superstar SKEPTA’s original track from his 2016 Konichiwa. The band pays their tributes without falling into the trap of creating a generic cover, it flexes their own talents but puts that song into a whole new perspective instrumentally which is interesting to see.
However, there is a line drawn between appreciation and appropriation. On one track, WMD (Wasteman Down), non-white listeners might find unease with the use of ‘wasteman’. Its origins are rooted in Jamaican history but the slang has been adopted as part of MLE (Multicultural London English) and some might argue is predominantly used by BAME, in particular black Londoners. There’s an area of debate for how and when this word can be used, obviously, it’s heavily used in grime but that genre has been innovated by astounding black artists. There clearly isn’t the ill intention here but it feels somewhat dishevelled and disingenuous for a white vocalist from Leeds to be using this word over and over again.
Being their first LP there are the obvious teething problems. The clean vocals sometimes feel displaced, especially in tracks like Shut Down, which was an amazing tribute but it tried to pair classically melodic vocals with a song that’s fast rhythm and animated flow that would have paired better with just unclean vocals. This occurs a few times on the album, Our Lives being another example. The clean vocals feel like they’re stuck in the early 2000s metalcore, KILLSWITCH ENGAGE-era, but the instrumentals have succeeded in a newer age of metalcore that takes from beatdown and hardcore elements and the two don’t merge seamlessly.
Another issue that could be worked on in future releases is their transitions between songs, in particular, their Surviving Life… …And Getting By seems like they wanted to separate one larger song into two elements to make them tracks of their own meaning but still have them mesh into one upon chronological listening. The issue is they don’t flow at all. The end of Surviving Life… abruptly fades out and then it doesn’t actually fade back in for … And Getting By which starts so abruptly it almost sounds like a record skip. There definitely could have been a better way to merge the two songs without using that approach.
Overall, Blood Is Blood is a good first offering from ON HOLLOW GROUND, it’s exciting for fans to see them step into the world of full-lengths and extend their talents beyond a wider stretch. They play to what they know works but make it exhilarating and surprising, also incorporating elements that aren’t typically considered metalcore but still work. There’s room for improvements, but it’s still a good listen nonetheless.
Rating: 6/10
Blood Is Blood is out now via self-release.
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