Despite the confident, speaker-cleaving attack of Baptists' new sophomore LP, Bloodmines, the Vancouver crust-and-hardcore outfit will readily admit that they were a little unsure of how it would turn out. Coming just a year-and-a-half after the blunt force blitz of 2013's Bushcraft, there were concerns about rushing out a hatchet job.
"I think we were nervous about making an album that'd be up to par with the last one," vocalist Andrew Drury tells Exclaim! Drummer Nick Yacyshyn adds, of the quick turnaround between their two LPs, "It's hard not to worry about putting something out after you've already done something — it's just totally nerve-wracking. We had two years of preparing for Bushcraft, and this one we maybe had a couple months worth of writing."
If the band were winging it by the time they made it back to Salem, MA to once again record with Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou at his GodCity Studios, it's hard to tell. Upping the ante from their debut are politically minded d-beat detonations like "String Up," high-speed sucker punches like "Dissembler" and the mind-warping maliciousness of metal waltz "Vistas." Even Ballou contributed to the chaos, adding a one-note bend to "Harm Induction" that blasts through the mix like an unsettled blue whale.
While Drury's teeth-bearing diatribes and guitarist Danny Marshall's lean, lacerating riffs are key to Bloodmines' sound, all of this is anchored by the awe-inducing Yacysyhn, whose precision pummelling has made a fan out of Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl. All the more impressive if, as Yacyshyn suggests, the comfort level with the new material wasn't quite there.
"I didn't really know all my stuff as well this time around, which was kind of cool," the drummer says through a humble smile. "Danny and I talked about that, it's kind of like, 'It's there, fuck it. That's what we recorded, that's how it turned out.' It's definitely more of a raw, raging feel."
"I think we were nervous about making an album that'd be up to par with the last one," vocalist Andrew Drury tells Exclaim! Drummer Nick Yacyshyn adds, of the quick turnaround between their two LPs, "It's hard not to worry about putting something out after you've already done something — it's just totally nerve-wracking. We had two years of preparing for Bushcraft, and this one we maybe had a couple months worth of writing."
If the band were winging it by the time they made it back to Salem, MA to once again record with Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou at his GodCity Studios, it's hard to tell. Upping the ante from their debut are politically minded d-beat detonations like "String Up," high-speed sucker punches like "Dissembler" and the mind-warping maliciousness of metal waltz "Vistas." Even Ballou contributed to the chaos, adding a one-note bend to "Harm Induction" that blasts through the mix like an unsettled blue whale.
While Drury's teeth-bearing diatribes and guitarist Danny Marshall's lean, lacerating riffs are key to Bloodmines' sound, all of this is anchored by the awe-inducing Yacysyhn, whose precision pummelling has made a fan out of Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl. All the more impressive if, as Yacyshyn suggests, the comfort level with the new material wasn't quite there.
"I didn't really know all my stuff as well this time around, which was kind of cool," the drummer says through a humble smile. "Danny and I talked about that, it's kind of like, 'It's there, fuck it. That's what we recorded, that's how it turned out.' It's definitely more of a raw, raging feel."
