When I first discovered TURIAN three years ago with their last LP No Longer Human, I honestly expected great things after hearing that record, one I found to be quite unique in the overcrowded landscape of metallic hardcore. I really try not to place expectations on bands like that because, as I’ve said times before, it’s not fair to me or the band, but sometimes you just catch a feeling that tells you ‘these MFs are gonna be a big deal’.
Honestly, TURIAN could have just gone the safer route and given us more No Longer Human, I certainly wouldn’t have hated that. While they did do that in the artistic and core values sense, what’s achieved on Blood Quantum Blues is far and beyond ‘more of the same’, impressively so. TURIAN found themselves and in doing so freed themselves and transcended into one of the best heavy bands out right now.
Blood Quantum Blues genuinely reminds me of what Rage Against The Machine were able to achieve three decades ago with their marriage of hip-hop-infused melody and message. It’s not that TURIAN are going for the same things sonically, but the heart is the same – make some of the coolest, militantly pissed off, forward thinking music sound as catchy as possible and fill it with earworm lyrics that expound on injustice and ancestral rage often buried under the erasure of history, sputter of late-stage capitalism, and the sound of a tear gas canister ricocheting off of a protester’s orbital bone while concealed, nameless federal agents abduct all manner of people if they’re the wrong color or speak the wrong language. The title track contains traces of the righteous indignance found in droves in “Killing In the Name”, “Chemical Bath” names literal violations of human rights and dehumanization made routine similar to “People of the Sun”, and so on. Still, because of TURIAN‘s sonic divergence, there’s a lot more to talk about and give flowers to.
It’s tough to know where to start, or to identify the biggest element of Blood Quantum Blues that makes it stand out. It’s a great example of something that’s more than the sum of its parts – albums that combine a lot of if not all these elements are many, but I haven’t heard one executed on this level for years. I had a hunch this would be the case since hearing the single “Chemical Bath”. Goddamn, what a song. The synthetic elements, the nu metal groove, the rage-tinged vocals, and damning lyrics that jump neck deep into the use of pesticides like Zyklon B and DDT to delouse Mexicans crossing the southern border for work in the first half of the 1900s and the Bath Riots that followed, one of countless violations of human dignity and eras of extreme subjugation that America has gleefully set upon communities and inspires other to do (‘Zyklon B, chemical bath/Nazis copied the US‘). A song about something so serious shouldn’t sound this good and catchy, and yet here we are, vocalist Vern Metztli-Moon belting out at the end in true Zack de la Rocha fashion, ‘Medicalized violence, racist policies. Your foremen and your fucking sentries won’t quell the rioting, you fucking pigs!‘
It’s a deeply personal thing for Metztli-Moon, themself Yaqui in ancestry and that particular Indigenous people having great ties to the land in northern Mexico. One of, if not THEE, biggest cementing element of Blood Quantum Blues‘ teeth-gritted rage is its kick to the chest of colonial violence, and while it can’t rewrite the harrowing history where white colonists killed, raped, robbed, plagued, sabotaged, and drove out countless Natives of the land while redrawing borders over and over, it can certainly reckon with the abject mess left behind by generations of expounding trauma and loss.
“Burden Of The Blood” deals with this directly, lamenting the passing down of ancestral pain and grief never properly felt, the weight of an entire lineage resting on the newest generation’s shoulders. “Mutiny” is about breaking that cycle of trauma and how the spirits of family now gone guide your journey to do so. “Blood Quantum Blues”, like “Chemical Bath”, is much more explicit with its anger and tone toward the concept of blood quantum itself, rightfully so, and as such has some of the most powerful moments of the album here (‘Delusion, drunk on bigotry/Fuck your manifest destiny/Fuck your ordained divinity/Fuck you, you ain’t killing me‘) all flanked around the steely hammer of industrial rhythms and a groovy riff that sounds like something Carcass would splice into their modern work.
And speaking of that, the work that went into the sound of this album is phenomenal, fine-tuning every approach and experimentation TURIAN revel in. With members having a history of electronic-based music, it was natural for it to seep into the cracks made by relentless tirades of metal. “Chemical Bath” is accented by them throughout, but the sub-minute interlude “Mache” is the best, most thorough example of the kinds of texturing and cosmic feelings that synths can bring to music like this and makes it a great transition between “Place Of Darkness” which touches on ritualistic death and references afterlife and feathered serpents found in Mesoamerican religion and culture, and “Divine Child (No One’s Daughter)” which is its own beast entirely with blustery, celestial acoustic asides and punkier guitars. Hell, “Nite Flights” even flirts with some light psychedelia while “Spill” and “Place Of Darkness” install some thrashy drums for quicker pacing and execution.
With that, I’ve successfully, though unintentionally, gone through nearly all ten songs on Blood Quantum Blues (no offence “Leash”, you’re great too with the deconstruction of alienating, silencing love), each one a gem of crystalline quality no matter how bloodstained they are from the horrors of the past or the draining labor of present lives. TURIAN gave us a centuries-spanning work of reflection and toil, told through serrated yet passionate vocals and chameleonic instrumentation that somehow nails every angle and style attempted. It’s undisputable how the band has grown since starting out late last decade and, like the moving cover of this album, shows the growth that even one person in the equation can foster. This is firmly, comfortably the best metal album I’ve heard this year so far, and it’s gonna take a hell of a lot to beat it.
Now all we need is for the band to drop a reading list.
