The Industrial Twilight: Bloody Woods

Thursday, June 25, 2020

Bloody Woods - "Romanzen" [2015]

Artist: Bloody Woods

Title: Romanzen

Genre: Neofolk

Country: China
Year: 2015

Track List:

Intro: Die Ballade Der Loreley
Im Tollen Wahn
Love Story
Der Wunde Ritter
Blasses Angesicht
Maliry
It Won't Stop
You Can Smile
Doch Sie, Die Mich Am Meisten
Wanderers Nachtlied
Sonnet 39
Berg Und Burgen
Down By The Lake

After several years of hiatus, one of the best known Chinese neofolk acts Bloody Woods (not to be confused with the Indian metalcore band Bloodywood) has released a new full-length album in 2015, and it has a more Western European character than many actual European neofolk bands. I absolutely won't be suprised if such an album was released by a German band, because it features mostly ballad-like songs with lyrics based on the poetry of German Romanticism (in particular, Heinrich Heine).

It also has some metal influences (especially doom, which isn't surprsing given that the founder of Bloody Woods, Bai Shui, is also a member of a doom metal band Solitary Piligrim), which weren't present on their earlier releases. There are also some faster/danceable songs ("Maliry") and re-recorded versons of their early sons ("You Can Smile"). Overall, it's the best Bloody Woods release so far and definitely recommended to all the fellow lover of neofolk with lyrics in German (even if it's made in China, like pretty much everything nowadays):

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About this blog

I created this blog mostly because I wanted to practise my English skills, and to showcase the industrial, gothic, punk, metal, neofolk and progressive rock scene of Russia/ex-USSR and Eastern Europe (especially Hungary) in the meanwhile.

As you can see, this blog doesn't take itself seriously enough, but I hope I'm doing good enough with my reviews even if my proficiency in English is limited. Along with the aforementioned stuff from Eastern Europe, I occasionally post some classic and rare albums that aren't to be missed, and generally whatever I want. Other categories of note:

* finno-ugric rarities - various music (including pop) in minor Finno-Ugric languages which I'm interested in because of my heritage. The music from Hungary, Finland and Estonia can be found under the respective categories;

* lo-fi - various poorly recorded demos from before 2000 that are of historical importance. Most of these demos come from the USSR era, so you might want to check out the USSR category as well.

As of now, I try to post only music that has already been made free by the artists themselves, or the rare old releases that are out of print. But if you're an artist and would like me to remove the download links of your work, just contact me using the form below.

Sorry, I don't do reviews by request, I don't have the time. Moreover, I think the bands that feel the need to advertise themselves by sending their demos to as many blogs as possible are usually just plain boring. If you want to contact me for any other reason, use the contact form below.

It should be obvious enough that reviewing anything on here doesn't equals endorsement of artists' personal views. This especially concerns neofolk and martial industrial. It'd be fair enough to say that I have the same approach to the political and religious topics in these genres as Laibach do.

Many of the female musicians featured on my blog are amateur models, and in many cases their modelling work is no less interesting than their music. Right now I'm working on giving it a separate section of the blog (just in case if anyone wants my review to be only about their music and not their looks). The work is in progress, check back later if you're interested.

The title of my blog comes from a song by The Kovenant (album "SETI", 2003).