3 Inches of Blood

O Canada!

I first heard 3 Inches of Blood in a punk dive bar with a superb jukebox. Most punk bars have a good selection of - surprise - punk rock, but the selection is narrow with the most diversity being sliced amongst the spectrum of horrorpunk to streetpunk. This particular den of thieves, though, had a mystical musical savant behind the album choices. Outside of being known for a particularly rowdy crowd imbibing underneath an ironically cheerful sign, everyone who was anyone knew the bar for the jukebox. Hank Sr. (and Jr. AND III), Merle, Thin Lizzy, Early Scorpions, Emperor, A Global Threat, Aus-Rotten, Megadeth, Bouncing Souls…the magician who put those tracks side by side had clearly peered into the universe, saw its core frequencies, and memorialized them and himself in sonic purity.

The early 2000’s saw a huge resurgence of metal with new bands taking up the mantle at the same time the giants were still going strong. These fresh, bar-circuit type bands will almost always appeal to me over arenas, and thus enters 3 Inches of Blood: an instantly classic epic power metal band elevated with dual vocals - a gravelly-screamer and a wailer with miles of vibrato. Touches of speed metal and thrash give them plenty of dynamic energy.

While their first two albums were good, they had that distinct renfaire vibe that seemed to be prevalent to power metal revival bands at the time. Their third album, Fire Up the Blades had a massive leap in musical quality in both songwriting and technical quality. Still sword and sorcery, but more serious. I’d rank FUtB with one of the best metal albums of all time.

The jukebox song everyone played at the bar:

Subsequent albums reverted to leather-clad metal, for example….well, Leather Lord:

And a straight-up tribute to Dio:

Still, there was some magic to Fire Up the Blades. I’ll leave you with this cover of Lucifer’s Friend: