Album Review
Now here comes an interesting album. A compilation of Trustkill Records bands signifying the label's 10 years of existence, titled Blood, Sweat, and Ten Years. Now you may be looking at the track listing and saying to yourself, “Well, where’s the Disembodied or Brother’s Keeper or Harvest?” This is funny, because I was asking myself the exact same thing. Now usually when a record company would make a release such as this, I would imagine they would pick material from bands that help get the label started, like the three previously mentioned bands, however, none of them are to be found. Instead, your ears will be graced only by tracks of bands currently on the label (with the exception of Poison the Well whose contract I believe was just bought out by a bigger label, so in a sense they're still on Trustkill or at least that’s the way I read into it) like Eighteen Visions, .hopesfall., ArmsBendBack (who some of you may know I have a great distaste for if you read my earlier review), Bleeding Through, Open Hand, NORA, Most Precious Blood, Throwdown, Walls of Jericho, and lastly Poison the Well.
I guess this is one way of promoting your new bands, but I would see it as kind of slapping the older bands in the face that helped you get where you are today. All the material on here however is solid, with the exception of the ArmsBendBack stuff and the Open Hand track is slightly above par. I guess my problem with this, is I could have made this album with my own CD collection as every other song on here I already have access to with the full album. If you want to get a good taste of what Trustkill has to offer now, then this is a perfect album for you as you will get a little taste from each of their current bands. On top of that, the album is relatively cheap wherever you may come across it, so even if you only like half of what it has to offer, you are hardly out any money. While I think it is a bit lame that older Trustkill bands weren’t included in the release, this is a perfect way to find out what the label has to offer and they do have plenty of solid bands worthy of checking out (otherwise I wouldn’t have already heard pretty much all these tracks on their respective albums which I own and enjoy).
Note: All scores are zero, because it’s hard to rate the album as a whole with so many different contributions and styles.