Since my first rendezvous with Devil’s Whorehouse (DW) in October 08 – when their “Werewolf” EP was the first and so far only album to receive a rating of 100 from my hand – I’ve been looking forward to this record. As so often before, looking forward to something has made my expectations rise to an impossible level, that is actually rather unfair to the band.

In my October review I nailed this band to the metal sky, saying that “Actually, I could keep writing about these three songs for hours. My neighbors must be getting tired of them, but I simply can’t. This rocks!”. There is two claims in those sentences: 1) That DW is one hell of a fusion metal band, creating enough diversity and infusing the music with such genius, that three petty songs can excite me just as much as full albums of other bands. And the more ambiguous 2) that perhaps DW excel in short explosions of energy, rather than lengthy anthological albums. Both claims has been verified now, I’m afraid. Although an album of less than 40 minutes can’t exactly be called overly drawn out, that is non the less what “Ashes and Blood” feels like, when you have heard “Werewolf”, as much as I have.

This, however, doest make the individual songs any less brilliant! My advice is to either listen to this album a few times, pick your favorites and add them to your playlist. Or – as I was obliged to, and what shoved quite an effective way to get to love this album – listen to is over and over again, let it grow on you, find your inner wolf and howl at the moon…

Musically DW still focuses on the three main genres of “Werewolf” – another way of putting it is to say they kept their promises. The cocktail of black metal, rock n’ roll and dark rhythmic punk is very durable and constantly open up new dimensions. Personally I could have used more tracks like “Pentagram Murderer” – the most energetic song from the EP, that unfortunately didn’t make it to the full length. Parts of “Blood and Ashes” is too slow-paced and not punk enough for my taste.

Altogether I recommend this album sincerely to any fans of Motörhead, Reverend Bizarre, Danzig and Venom – just like I did with “Werewolf”. It lacks some of the vigor presented on the EP, but it shows new sides of a very interesting and quite unique band.