Six years since the release of their 2014 EP, Black Budget Science, Halifax four-piece heavy-rockers Old Blood return with “Blacklights,” the first single from their upcoming third album, Reckless Calm.
The song gets billed as a groove-heavy head-banger, with Old Blood tightening the nuts on their sound it’s got a bottom end that’s got all the kick of an off-kilter washing machine. Loud and melodic, “Blacklights” is liable to work something loose.
Like everything that stumbles into the world during this inopportune moment, the “Blacklights” finds itself out of step with the state of thing. But pandemics wait for no one and no singles. The world “Blacklights” was born into was no one of head-banging party anthems, but a world of six-feet of self-isolation. And nobody opens up a pit with that level of social distancing being de rigueur.
It’s something that the band became aware of as the release date for the single approached. Rather than an ill-timed inevitability of scheduling, let this stand as memorial to the days of head-banging now past, and the days yet to come.
“When we wrote and recorded this song, it was very much with the mindset of summertime, windows-down road trips and big groups of sweaty people rocking out at festivals and shows – long before words like social distancing and self-isolation had entered the global lexicon,” says Josh White of Old Blood. “Clearly, much has changed these last few weeks.”
“That said, we wanted to offer up new music now more than ever, as folks need something they can turn up LOUD. Take care, be kind, and look out for one another,” White said.
Old Blood’s third album, Reckless Calm, is expected to be released on May 11, 2020. Let us hope that we are all in better shape to by then.