The Devil's Blood — River Of Gold, live at Maryland Deathfest X
Eindhoven occult rock at the peak of the Lemouchi siblings' run. Farida singing like she means it. Selim playing like he knows the time is short. By 2014 he was gone. By 2013 the band already was.
Stop and watch this one properly.
The Devil’s Blood were a Dutch occult rock band from Eindhoven, active 2006 to 2013. Farida Lemouchi on vocals. Her brother Selim Lemouchi on guitar. Together they made three studio albums in four years and disappeared right when the genre they helped seed was about to explode. The Time of No Time Evermore (2009). The Thousandfold Epicentre (2011). III: Tabula Rasa or Death and the Seven Pillars (2013).
This footage is from Maryland Deathfest X, the tenth edition of that festival, in 2012. The band were touring The Thousandfold Epicentre. River Of Gold is the centrepiece of that record. The live arrangement strips back the studio reverb and lets the song breathe in the way occult rock is supposed to: melodic, ritualistic, completely committed to the bit.
Watch Farida. The Mouth of Satan, as she was billed. Most occult-rock vocalists since 2014 have been chasing what she did naturally. Watch Selim. He plays this like the songs already meant something specific to him.
The band announced their dissolution in January 2013. Selim died by suicide in March 2014, age thirty-three. Farida has continued music under other projects. The catalogue stops at three records.
The Devil’s Blood matter because the entire current wave of female-led occult rock — Lucifer, Year of the Goat, Blood Ceremony, Devil Master — exists in part because The Devil’s Blood proved the form could carry a band. They went first. They went hardest. And they did not get to see what they started.
Watch the clip. This is the band at its peak.
Listen to this: The Thousandfold Epicentre