Aural Fixations

THE BLOOD SHOT
Wake Up and Die Right
(Garage D'or)
On its debut album Wake Up and Die Right, Minneapolis three-piece the Blood Shot smashes open the garage door and shows off its collection of Eurohorror DVDs, serial killer biographies and suspiciously human-looking skulls. Led by the wild-eyed Andrew Kereakos, the trio spits out piranhas of sound, all teeth and hair and eyeballs, angrily blurring any lines between Black Sabbath, Spacemen 3 and the Nuggets compilation. Kereakos' distorted vocal presence calls up spirits of the bluesmen he obviously adores without sounding imitative, while his firebreathing guitar laughs as Johnny Thunders cornholes Tony Iommi in Dave Wyndorf's basement. "Fingers on My Heart," "Runnin' and Gunnin' You Down" and "The Hell That You've Created" give you a good idea of the thunderclouds raining on Kereakos' brain; when he sings "You're Mine," it's more threat than celebration. The sonics are filthy enough for punk rock, yet the cover of the James Gang's "The Bomber" fits right in. In another life, the boys in the Blood Shot would be toking up and playing detuned metal riffs for hours at a time, or maybe ejaculating spiked riffs at high velocity instead. Either way they'd be screaming about how much they hate everyone. This is what "grunge" really is: dirty, ugly, sleazy, rocking. Michael Toland