Stream Work Up the Blood, the Latest Industrial Banger from Confines

The best is when metal musicians you respect take hard left turns into different territory and their output is still totally awesome. Even better is when your friends are super talented so you don’t have to be all like “Yeah man, great stuff!” as you do your best to turn the sides of your mouth up into a smile without it seeming fake.

Thankfully, Confines, the solo project of David Castillo — co-owner of Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar and vocalist of Primitive Weapons — falls into both categories for me. The body-thumping industrial beats and searing, pulsating synths of Confines are a far cry from the post-hardcore/metal of Primitive Weapons but fall right into the wheelhouse of stuff I’ve been digging lately (weird how our tastes all change with time, sometimes in parallel, right?). What’s more, next time I run into David at Vitus I won’t have to fake digging his new EP, Work Up the Blood, because it’s legitimately fantastic, at once hard-changing and emotive, dynamic and nuanced. Put a much more succinct and relatable way: Work Up the Blood is worth every bit of your valued listening time.

You can listen to the track “Oro Y Muerte” below and stream the whole EP over at Metal Injection. Work Up the Blood officially drops on December 3 via Synthicide; pre-order at Bandcamp.