TAKE IT IN BLOOD – Exit From Life

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8.0

• Bands:
  TAKE IT IN BLOOD
• Duration: 00:29:47
• Available from: 12/06/2026
• Label:

• Born Dead Collective

Hardcore, like metal, has always lived in cycles. There are periods in which certain formulas prevail, others in which the expressive urgency leaves room for increasingly codified, almost predictable dynamics. In a context like the current one, where breakdowns, mosh parts and winks often seem to follow a pre-established script, Take It In Blood's long-distance debut, “Exit From Life”, appears almost like a foreign body. Not because it reinvents the genre, but because it recovers a form of passion that does not feel the need to be spectacularized or packaged to be immediately effective.
The French quintet offers strongly metallic hardcore, but distant from the most popular canons today. Here you don't forcefully pile up cuts designed to drive the pit crazy, nor do you chase effective ideas. Instead, everything aims to build a hostile atmosphere, in which each riff seems to arise from an authentic desire to be overwhelmed rather than from the search for easy applause. It's a subtle but fundamental difference, which makes “Exit From Life” a surprisingly credible record.

The negative attitude can inevitably recall that of the infamous Kickback, another creature born in the French suburbs, but the comparison ends almost exclusively in terms of approach. Musically, Take It In Blood looks decisively overseas, recovering the lessons of the nineties of the first Merauder, Cold As Life and Dmize. The result is heavy hardcore, which advances with a menacing pace, leveraging angular riffs and rhythmic tempos without ever transforming heaviness into an exercise as an end in itself. While maintaining an extremely uniform and coherent atmosphere, the tracklist nevertheless carefully avoids flattening. Behind the blanket of hostility that envelops the album, one perceives a more reasoned writing than it might seem at first listen: the riffs change skin with a certain continuity, the rhythms expertly alternate martial gaits and sudden accelerations, while each song contributes to strengthening a common identity without ever giving the impression of slavishly replicating the previous one. There is a precise idea behind this succession of episodes, a concept of tension that favors the construction of the atmosphere over the search for the single moment of effect.

When the accumulated anxiety needs to be vented, some acceleration with a Slayerian flavor emerges, useful for momentarily breaking the oppressive cloak without compromising the coherence of the whole. They are measured openings, inserted intelligently within a writing that prefers to work on constant pressure rather than an emotional roller coaster.
The real strength, however, is the mood: “Exit From Life” exudes Parisian suburbia from every note. There is no street pose, no caricature constructed to appear “real”. Here the feeling is that of being in front of musicians who really know this anger and pour it into the songs with absolute naturalness. The impression is almost physical: the songs seem imbued with concrete, tension and urban discomfort, without the need for proclamations or slogans. The attitude is that of the classic “What the fuck are you looking at?”but elevated to a musical language. A violence that doesn't try to be nice, inclusive or reassuring. On the contrary, it deliberately makes people uncomfortable, recalling how certain hardcore was also born for this reason: to create friction, not consensus. In an era in which such a segment seems increasingly involved in mainstream dynamics and conditioned by current trends, such a rough proposal takes on the value of a stance.

Take It In Blood will therefore probably never become the band that makes everyone agree. Indeed, it is easy to imagine that their approach ends up alienating a part of the audience more accustomed to the shortcuts offered by one side of contemporary hardcore. But it is precisely this unwillingness to compromise that makes “Exit From Life” such a convincing debut. A ferocious, credible work animated by a danger that is rarely encountered today.