Analysis: The Devil’s Blood RIP?

Bummer alert! According to a snippy Friday morning band post, The Devil’s Blood has abruptly folded. They were totally awesome — their sophomore album The Thousandfold Epicentre was 2011’s bonerest collection of jamz — and were gaining steam via a juicy slot on last year’s Decibel Magazine Tour with Watain and Behemoth. Any such decision must originate with frontman Selim Lemouchi, known as SL, and that dude is intense and does not suffer fools.

Atm I’m crying mildly, but for now I’ll postpone my full mourning; after all, easy access to the internet can lead to the occasional hasty statement — especially for a mercurial, uncompromising artist like SL. (Even I once declared on FB that Truimph is Canada’s second-best hard rock trio, when I feel that honor belongs to Zebra. Duh.)

So we can hope that once the dust settles, SL will opt to retract and/or whoever whammyed his jam will recant and repair. Another reason to stay hopeful is that the statement was signed by both SL and his sister, The Devil’s Blood vocalist Farida Lemouchi (“F”). That might imply that their partnership is preserved and that the creative spine of The Devil’s Blood is intact.

But then again, SL joked to me last January that recording with F sometimes “explodes into flurries of disgust and hatred.” And certainly our optimism is imperiled by the statement’s declaration of a cancellation to April tourdates, including the awesome Roadburn Festival in their native Holland. Plus the statement’s closing words are definitive: Consummatum est (according to the internet: “It is finished,” spoken by Christ as he died on the cross). Shitttt. Stand by for more info :(

Thanks to MaTT!