Bloody Knives

You can waste a lot of time trying to cook up a clever pun for a band called Bloody Knives, so let's zig instead of zag; leaving the vocabulary gymnastics to others whilest we zoom in on the good stuff - Their music.

There they are, caught in the very act. Left-to-right, we've got Jim Moon on synths (though his official credit is "sound manipulator"), Jake McCown on drums, and that's Preston Maddox on the right there, abusing his bass.

McCown and Maddox hail from Dallas-way, having made the trek and settled in these parts back in '03, playing together in a variety of groups and manning a variety of instruments in the process, before forming Bloody Knives. Apparently, drums are not McCown's instrument of choice, but Bloody Knives needed a drummer, he was up for it, and there ya go. It works - We managed to catch these guys at The Austin Electronic Music Grid's "Knife Night" (along with the always-brilliant Knifight) at The Loft at Silhoutte, and McCown owns the drum kit, with a frenetic, you-can-hear-it-down-on-the-street passion.

No doubt, the band's name bears metallic connotations, and you're assuming they're another heavy metal band pounding Austin's sonic landscape. And sure, their sound is heavy with bass and dissonant intervals. But take a longer look at this pic; you'll notice the absence of the holiest of ritualistic metal utensils; the six-stringed axe. Bloody Knives decided they'd get more flexibility, audio-wise, out of midi instrumentation; hence Moon and his midi trigger pads and effects panels.

So Nope, they're not metal; but rather a darkly-rabid psychedelic (the more accepted label is "shoe gaze industrial"). Here's a nice sampling of their style; unhappy industrial synths, pumped up with some solid drums and glazed over with some heavy bass stylings to complete the wall of sonic goodness:
Notice the constructive use of noise and the bass-driven chord progression? Here's another clever piece, along similar lines:
These guys have been on a gigging tear for the last 7 months, they've melted faces all over town (Beer Land, Scoot Inn, etc.) and around the country: From San Antonio and Houston to Des Moines and parts in between.

Turns out all that blue-collar dues-paying has paid off for Bloody Knives: As this article was working it's way out, it was announced that they had signed to XD Records, a boutique shoe-gaze label. (Find out more about XD here.) And this is not Bloody Knives' maiden voyage into La La Label Land either - Maddox has been running his own label (Killed Rocket Records) for quite some time now. Check out this interview from the When The Sun Hits blog for more.

When it comes to production the guys are at home, literally - They've recorded a lot of their songs in (yep, it's true) Maddox's garage. (Turns out he's also recorded 2 CDs worth of material for Laserz, another Austin-based indie.)

So with a DIY studio at the ready, 7+ months of steady gigging (in and out of town) behind them, AND with a new label ready to push the promotion wagon, expect Bloody Knives to carve a bloody trail of fans from here to... Well, kingdom come.

Before you go, give "disappear" a good listening. Better yet, download the thing for maximum pleasure. You know you want to.

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Find out more about Bloody Knives on FaceBook, BandCamp, Last.fm, and MySpace.

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