The Blood

Having already built up a strong reputation with their debut release in 2006, all Reykjavik! needed to do was put even more of a unique stamp on things the next time through. On The Blood they succeeded in spades. If nothing else, Reykjavik! know how to start an album with deceptive style — the initial twangy rock rampage begins at a quiet volume, the better to lull a listener before everything amps up further and the screams begin. The rampaging skew-whiff nature of nearly every song could almost be called a hybrid between the B-52's, Sonic Youth, and the Boredoms, a dance party for death metal screamers and riot grrls alike. (That one of their catchiest and most extreme numbers is named "Kate Bush" seems perversely appropriate somehow.) When songs like "Acid Rain" build to intensely dramatic climaxes not once but twice (vocally, then musically), something pretty good is at work. The sheer merriment running through nearly every song is key, while hearing how it's twisted and made darker and more shriekingly on edge each time even more so. Just when it seems they couldn't come up with a more frenetic song they usually do, while calling one of the more restrained numbers "We Are Not Ready for a Relationship with God, What's Wrong with You?" seems only apt.