It’s their first EP, and it’s clear that Boston outfit Black Thai are still searching out their sound, but the heavy rock they offer on Blood From On High is bound to find some friends among underground worshippers of the riff. The band boasts members of Roadsaw, We’re All Gonna Die and Cortez, but the feel of Black Thai has little to do with any of those bands, and is rougher, grittier, darker and also somehow more commercial.
The first two tracks of Blood From On High, “The Ladder” and “Satan’s Toolshed,” previously served as Black Thai’s first demo in an earlier recorded form, but they mesh together on the EP as well as they did when they were on their own. The following three cuts—“Saturation Point,” “Sinking Ships” and “333”—show the growth the band is beginning to undertake, with “Saturation Point” in particular leaning on an accessibility that neither of the first two songs dared approach, opting instead for a more deliberate, doomier, groove that one might expect from an underground as vibrant as Boston’s.
It will be interesting to see where Black Thai ends up stylistically, but on Blood From On High, they at least do the work of proving their capability as songwriters and the vitality of their material. The promise they show on these five tracks could lead them just about anywhere.
In A Word: Ballsy
