Black Heart Procession | Blood Bunny / Black Rabbit EP

Most Likely To: make you relapse.

Blood Bunny / Black Rabbit is an EP for Black Heart Procession fans who enjoy the progressive and more electronic wave of the band’s music. For the eight-song release (consisting of five remixes and three original, unreleased songs), the band enlisted synthesizer-happy musical associates such as Mr Tube, Eluvium, and Jamuel Saxon.

As for the new material, “Blank Page” and “Orchid” are the most promising of the three tracks. The melodies are dark and gloomy and the overall feel is dreary, gorgeous, and haunting–three qualities that Black Heart Procession executes very well. “Devotion” is a gothic throwback with a lackluster chorus (“I have so much to say to you / Devotion, obsession.”) which makes it difficult to praise given how large a portion of the song it makes up.

By the third song on Blood Bunny, whether one likes it or not, the listener is reintroduced to the world of 1990s industrial music with Mr Tube’s “Silence” and “Heaven Below” remixes. The Lee Scratch Perry remix “Freeze” uses what sound like sound bites from Thundercats’ Snarf (“REOOW!”), which comes off as jarring. Along with that, there’s an unexpected trance like beat behind it all, which makes it standout from any other track on Blood Bunny but remains as a dissonant arrangement.

Labelmates Eluvium transport the listener with a dreamy, instrumental, nine-minute remix of “Drugs.” The beautiful, sinking piano ballad has an eerie, dramatic sadness to it and is reworked twice on the EP. The unofficial part two is the four-minute Jamuel Saxon remix. Jamuel Saxon keeps the vocals, adds some reverb, and lends the track an electro-pop beat.

Blood Bunny / Black Rabbit is a record best reserved for for hardcore Black Heart Procession fans. With the exception of Lee Scratch Perry’s “Freeze,” the album’s remixes don’t stray too much from the originals. The album’s song lineup leaves a bit to be desired; there is no real continuity or flow between the remixes, making the listener feel as though the EP is just a bunch of versions of what was rejected for full-length releases. The whole execution and arrangement of the tracks is slightly above mediocre, and while it is not a horrible album, in the end it is a sadly inconsistent, uninspiring EP.

Listen to “Blank Page” from Black Heart Procession:

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