Blood Music is a record label from Porvoo, Finland, that started out reissuing extreme metal and became the home of the darksynth acts Perturbator, GosT, Dan Terminus and Dynatron.[1] In the Frekvenci archive it has 25 listed releases from just 6 artists, a very tight roster: Perturbator alone accounts for 10 of the 25.
How did a metal label end up releasing darksynth?
The short version is one signing. Bandcamp Daily's 2017 profile says the label was run almost single-handedly by a founder who goes only by "J", and that it grew out of his habit of reissuing albums he felt were missing from his own collection.[1] Box sets of Strapping Young Lad, Moonsorrow and Emperor came first. He later tired of reissue work, which he found repetitive and badly paid, and moved to new black and death metal.[1] The profile gives no founding year, so we do not either.
Then came Perturbator. After several attempts J signed him, and Dangerous Days appeared in 2014.[1] He told Bandcamp Daily he had feared a purely electronic album might not sit well on a metal-themed label, and he pointed out that metal listeners tend to like horror and science fiction.[1] A metal blog described Dangerous Days in early 2015 as one of the label's fastest-selling releases.[2] The same profile says Perturbator became the label's most popular act and that The Uncanny Valley reached No. 3 on Billboard's Dance/Electronic chart.[1] By 2017 the metal magazine Louder was running a feature titled "Resonant evil: how synthwave is taking over the underground".[3]
What does the catalogue look like year by year?
By listed releases the label ranks 91st, so it is small. Its output has an odd shape, though.
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Year | Releases |
|---|---|
| 2012 | 3 |
| 2013 | 0 |
| 2014 | 1 |
| 2015 | 2 |
| 2016 | 9 |
| 2017 | 2 |
| 2018 | 1 |
| 2019 | 0 |
| 2020 | 2 |
| 2021 | 5 |
- 2012: three listings, all Perturbator. The profile dates his signing to 2014, so these are probably later editions of earlier records. A year on file can be a reissue date.
- 2016: nine listings, the peak. Perturbator has two, Dynatron three, GosT two and Tommy ’86 two. Tommy '86's Transhumanism is listed twice, which inflates the count a little.
- 2017 to 2020: a trickle. Two, one, none and two. The profile says the label paused for much of 2017 to organise its business and hire help.[1]
- 2021: five listings, three of them Perturbator's, and then nothing.
The mix is album-led: 14 LPs, 7 EPs, 2 compilations and 2 singles. Formats on file are digital, vinyl, CD and tape, which fits a label that began with vinyl box sets (more on that side of the business in Synthwave on vinyl, cassette and CD: formats in the data). Artist country is known for every release: France has 15, the United States 5 and Denmark 5.
What does it sound like?
Heavy, cinematic and mostly electronic, with metal as a frame of reference rather than a sound. Eighteen releases sit in the synthwave family and 7 in darksynth, but the community co-tags lean darker: 20 releases carry the darksynth tag, 6 horror synth, 4 electro-industrial and 1 black metal. As the main genre tag, retrowave leads with 8, plain synthwave has 7 and darkwave 5. For the wider map of that dark corner, see our guides to What is darksynth? The heavy, horror-lit side of synthwave and What is horrorsynth? Synthwave for the slasher-movie crowd. If bright outrun is more your speed, Rosso Corsa Records sits at the opposite end.
The metal link is more than marketing. Heavy Blog introduced GosT, a Michigan artist, as a "slasherwave" act whose debut Behemoth was a tongue-in-cheek 1980s throwback.[2] Dynatron, from Denmark, is the cosmic exception, with three releases in the archive tagged spacesynth.
Who are the key artists?
SHOW THE NUMBERS
| Artist | Releases |
|---|---|
| Perturbator | 10 |
| Dynatron | 5 |
| GosT | 4 |
| Dan Terminus | 3 |
| Tommy ’86 | 2 |
| HEALTH | 1 |
- Perturbator (France) has 10 of his 14 listed releases here, from the early editions to Lustful Sacraments. Our If you like Perturbator: artists to try next page follows his sound outward.
- Dynatron (Denmark) has 5 of 11.
- GosT (United States) has 4 of 14.
- Dan Terminus (France) has 3 of 8.
- Tommy '86 (France) has 2 of 24, so most of his work lives elsewhere.
- HEALTH, an American band, appear once, on a 2021 single, EXCESS, which shares its title with Perturbator's Excess EP from the same year.
Where to start with Blood Music
Eight records, one or two per artist, picked to cover the label's years and its three or four different moods.
- Perturbator · 2014 · Blood Music · LPThe 2014 album that brought Perturbator to the label; horror and cyberpunk themes on a metal label's roster.
- GosT · 2015 · Blood Music · LPGosT's 2015 debut, the slasher-film pastiche a metal blog covered before it came out.
- Dan Terminus · 2015 · Blood Music · LPA 2015 album from the French artist whose eight listed releases include three here.
- Perturbator · 2016 · Blood Music · LPThe 2016 album from the label's peak year, and the one Bandcamp Daily says charted on Billboard.
- Dynatron · 2016 · Blood Music · EPA 2016 EP in the spacesynth tag, the cosmic side of a dark label.
- Tommy ’86 · 2016 · Blood Music · LPA 2016 album tagged synthwave rather than darksynth, a change of colour in a dark list.
Is Blood Music still releasing records?
Not according to our data. The last listed release is from 2021, and nothing after that is on file, which puts the label in the archive's "silent" group (no listed release in three years). That is not proof it has stopped. The Bandcamp Daily profile describes a label that works in bursts, and our catalogue lags for recent releases, so check the label's own Bandcamp page before you assume anything.[1]
For more of this register, tune the Dark station (94.6 FM) on the radio or browse the Darksynth list. The label sits within the larger picture in our Synthwave labels worth knowing, and which are still active, which compares labels across the whole archive.
Sources
- Label Profile: Blood Music · Bandcamp Daily, Jeff Treppel, 11 Dec 2017
- GosT go on gonzo eighties slasher frenzy with new album Behemoth · Heavy Blog Is Heavy, Jan 2015
- Resonant evil: how synthwave is taking over the underground · Louder, Dom Lawson, 2 Feb 2017