3 Inches of Blood: ‘we wanted to represent our Canadian musical roots’

Leave the Disco Stu or Sexy Nurse costumes in the closet in favour of one that includes elements referencing Nordic mythology, something you’d find on a Medieval battlefield and a piece of dismembered anatomy.

Vancouver heavy metal act 3 Inches of Blood (3IOB) will whip Revelstoke into a Halloween frenzy this Thursday (Oct. 29) when they play the Regent Inn.

It will be their last stop on the current leg of their Canadian tour promoting their new album Here Waits Thy Doom.

Guitarist Shane Clark talked to the Times Review over a month ago when the new album had just dropped, saying it had been getting a pretty good reception, aside from some critical heavy metal website trolls (on whom 3IOB would presumably like to sic a horde of orcs).

Here’s one online metal forum denizen’s critique of the album art: “A little disappointing, I was expecting some epic battlefield $&@% with wizards etc... this looks too black metal-y”

The cover features two cloak-clad ghouls standing near a decaying moss and fern covered tree. Admittedly, the album art does look a little like Freddy Krueger after some dermabrasion therapy out on a nature hike through a coastal rain-forest with the Grim Reaper.

Another online critic notes that 3IOB have “just cut a giant in half” with the move to eschew some back-up vocals to allow the musicians to focus on their instruments more.

However, since then the reception from the Goatriders’ Horde (their fan club) has been good on the whole. A positive reception from their fan base is critical given that the band’s membership has turned over several times since they broke onto the B.C. metal scene in 2001. Since then they’ve gone on to receive critical praise amongst more discerning metal critics and fans over the years and have stood out in a metal scene often clogged with forgettable acts.

Their albums to date also include Battlecry Under a Winter Sun, Advance and Vanish and Fire Up The Blades.

Outsiders to the many metal genres can find themselves treading on thin ice (above an eternal, bottomless chasm) when seeking to describe or classify bands, so take it directly from 3IOB when they say they draw influence from Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, UFO, Rainbow and Enslaved and combine it into their own “lethal potion.” Think ripping, fast metal with fast, higher-pitched lyrics.

One departure for the band on Here Waits Thy Doom is some cover songs from outside the metal genre including Not Fragile by Bachman-Turner Overdrive. “We decided to cover Not Fragile by Bachman-Turner Overdrive because they’re a Canadian band and we wanted to represent our Canadian musical roots,” says vocalist Cam Pipes. “BTO had many hits, but we wanted to do a deeper cut from their catalogue plus Not Fragile has a heavy, driving riff at the core of the song which we felt translated well with our style.” They also cover Cities on Flame with Rock and Roll by Blue Oyster Cult and Daytona by Zeke.

Given their penchant for graphic heavy metal imagery combining the occult with medieval battlefield fare, there was one question the Times Review really wanted to ask guitarist Shane Clark, which we put to him near the end of the interview:

TR: Speaking of barbarians roaming the landscape ... I’m thinking of getting an old van and doing up the inside with a waterbed and a mini-bar. What should I have airbrushed on the outside?

Clark: Ohhh. That’s a good one. You should have a boar with wings getting impaled by a really gorgeous blonde who has a Viking helmet – kind of like the Heavy Metal magazine – you know that art work? A very barbarianesque bikini, but she’s also got kind of like a futuristic spear that shoots lasers and lightning is coming from the spear into the sky. And also she has a lion on a chain. The landscape is purple. The van itself should be black with a yellow sunset.”

Oakland-based stoner-metal trio Saviours opens for 3 Inches of Blood at the Regent Inn (112 1st St. East) on Thursday, Oct. 29.

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