So, Blood & Banjos was a kickstarted album that I backed... probably a couple of years ago. I don't know when, but a CD showed up at my house one day and it turned out to be this. Thus is how most of my kickstarter rewards go.

Anyways, I love unique metal interpretations. In this case, black metal combined with bluegrass, which has the awesome genre tag of blackgrass (blue metal just doesn't have the same jingle jangle). Thus, I expected to get banjo leads of black metal rasping vocals and blastbeats. However, the album doesn't play out like that, really, at all. Instead, you have a fairly good bluegrass-y baseline with blackened death metal interjections (and a healthy dose of Gothenburg riffage). More often then not, the parts aren't integrated, and it makes for something more akin to an early Opeth album than a progressive amalgamation of the two styles. I mean, of course it is a concept album (about a guy killing his wife and unborn child after being corrupted by Satan, and then fighting the village, and then he battles Satan for redemption... I mean, it's metal, come on). However, the last track truly starts to combine the two styles, and it is pretty great; plus, it is an epic in every sense of the word, since it's over 14 minutes long! Great capper, and the album builds to a pretty sweet culmination before the acoustic outro kicks in to cleanse the palate.

3.0/5 - It's good, especially for a cheap kickstarter project (I know the creators made no money off of this thing, since you can download it for free now!). The finale is truly impressive with the blending of styles, but the rest of the album doesn't quite get there. Still a worthwhile listen if you like some metal, and some bluegrass, and want some peanut butter in your chocolate.