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The Blood of Christ are a Canadian band who appear to have a decent amount of respect in the scene, often being credited in helping to define the Northern Hyperblast sound alongside Kataklysm, though they never broke out quite as big as that. Their demo The Lonely Flowers of Autumn in particular has a strong cult status around it, which is undoubtedly what led it to being reissued recently alongside their Frozen Tears demo. I'm not familiar with the rest of the band's output, so I don't really know how this compares, but I can say that this is definitely an album whose underground renown is well deserved.

The Lonely Flowers of Autumn was the beginning of what the band refers to as their Epic Dark Metal sound, which seems to mean a heavy, punishing Death Metal base with some technicality to it in the vein of Kataklysm and Morbid Angel that's mixed with a dark, melancholic Doom sound similar to My Dying Bride. The songs are dense and varied, able to weave between moodier pounding and blast beating fury without losing either their dense atmosphere or their blazing aggression, and while it's all working in a now recognizable style, it stands out by being one of the better examples. Opener "Autumn's Twilight" is a great representation of the album, opening with crushing, melancholic guitar work and deep guttural roars before shifting into a more traditional slab of Death Metal aggression, and the rest of the tracks more or less follow suit, with "Moonshroud-The Crescent Glow" being a particularly standout track.

Frozen Tears, on the other hand, is much more primitive and direct in approach, being closer to a Death/Grind sound with its relentless blasting and brutally short songs. They inject a bit of mood with a couple of interludes, so even at their earliest the band was striving to stand out as more than just another Carcass worship act, and even then they do a fine enough job to justify including this as part of the reissue.

Later works from this band seem to have a mixed reputation, so maybe this is an example of a band starting out great and just never capitalizing on what worked. I might get around to finding out for myself in the future, but for now, I can say this is more than a worthy reissue of an established gem that manages to sound vintage and engaging even decades later. Well worth checking out.