Blod - Helvetet På Jorden Skona Ingen Fast Gud Älskar Dig

Second or third or perhaps even fourth Blod release of 2024, a work that seems less connected to this year's output than it does the 'church music' derived folk song of the Pilgrimssånger and Där Ska Barnet Vara LPs from the previous two. Setting the wheels in motion over two years ago, the original intention was to make a 'full out choir record', but Gustaf Dicksson and his assorted arrangement of pals (Loopsel's Elin Engstrom amongst them once again) ended up somewhere a little different. I'm still a little unsure as to just how much of a straight bat Dicksson is playing with in his appropriation of religious musics (a judgment made more opaque by the provocative visual art he also produces), but he has been working away at this interest for some time now, which makes me think this might be less the parodic art-school critique I was suspicious of when Pilgrimssånger first came out than it is a genuine exploration of the devotional song, practices and culture that inform Christian worship in Sweden. My interest in the subject stretches about as far as it takes me to say the words, but there is something inherently strange about this triptych of records, almost surreal in fact, the idea that a fairly cool enclave of artists (and note there are lot more voices present here than on the previous two LPs) are exploring that most uncool of source material both quite mad and exactly the kind of thing experimental musicians should be doing. If I could speak Swedish, perhaps my understanding would be clearer, but taken as it is I'll choose to interpret it as a kind of exercise in cultish absurdity painted in the grain of lo-fi, a further continuation of Dicksson's interest in examining "beautiful things in ugly contexts". Given the way the world is turning, it feels like a commendable pursuit.