Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

It’s only when you take a closer look inside the glass you are drinking from, that you realise that for most of your life, what you thought you were drinking with the knowledge of purity, has in fact been a tumbler spiked with the invisible aggressive lies and with someone else’s infected Blood In The Water.

It is perhaps inevitable that the state of the world, the ecocide, the rape and pillage of our planet, our home, should become so common place that whilst we fight the power that is corrupting us, we cannot stop the tide that has for example made the people of Flint, Michigan, seemingly lose the right to fresh water, being treated as though they are a secondary thought to the profit potential and the poisons being pumped into the water supply.

Blood in the water is big business’ way of saying the rest don’t matter, and that if we don’t feel the anger well up in us, then maybe we deserve to feel the bitter, disgusting taste of iron on a frequent basis. Thankfully, Flotsam and Jetsam’s Eric ‘AK’ Knutson, Steve Conley, Michael Gilbert, Bill Bodily and Ken K Mary saw the specks and frith accumulating at the edges, the residue of others who had not cleansed the Metal tankard which they shared, and built a new foundation, one that sees the new album burns with passion, with the temperament of a volcano that rumbles with gracious warning that it is about to explode, to punch a hole in the atmosphere.

Flotsam And Jetsam might be seen as the perennial underdogs in a scene that has created incredible talent and music that which makes even the smallest hair on the back of the neck stand on end with might and pride, however, that would and is a disservice to the absolute presence that the band that has seen itself undergo revolutions in personnel, but never once wavered from its objective, of producing Thrash Metal that is thick, bold, resolute and passionate.

It is to this piercing and unrelenting cause that tracks such as Brace For Impact, The Walls, Cry For The Dead, A Place To Die, Grey Dragon and the album’s title track, Blood In The Water, that the blistering sun of the Arizona Desert lays down in homage, for it understands that it is the second source of heat from the area, and it cannot overwhelm the sincerity or the sheer will that the five musicians create.

Flotsam And Jetsam are not just legendary, they are the busters behind the myths, others from their stable, those who started out on the long road at the same time, may be more celebrated, but they won’t be as respected as the band behind Blood In The Water. An excellent and fulfilling album, one that stirs the blood into a frenzy.

Flotsam And Jetsam’s Blood In The Water is available now from AFM Records.

Ian D. Hall