Track Review: “The Blood Never Dried” by Lesions

“London’s paved in blood. From Viking sails to parliamentary votes — history is written by those in power. But it’s the people on the ground who live the real story. Four years ago, September 25th marked a major shift for cannabis reform with the SAFE Banking Act. For me, that moment wasn’t just politics – it was personal. Cannabis has saved my life. It’s the reason I speak up and it’s shaped who I am as a person. With cannabis in my medicine cabinet, I can achieve the things I’d never thought I would after my diagnosis of MS. Until then, what do you think history will say about our time?” ~ Clark French

So who is Clark French? Clark is an MS patient and one of the UK’s most prominent medical cannabis campaigners, with his story at the center of the film Grassroots: The Cannabis Revolution (Netflix, Amazon Prime) as well as appearing on BBC, Sky, ITV, Channel 4, The Times, The Sun and many more. Clark is a founding member of campaign groups: Norml UK, UKCSC and is the Founder of the UK’s longest running medical cannabis campaign group United Patients Alliance.

In Lesions, Clark French has become a vocalist, joining forces with multi-instrumentalist, producer and songwriter Sam Machin of The Arusha Accord and Arcaeon fame, choosing the microphone as a weapon with which to get his point across. Mixed and mastered by Justin Hill (SikTh, The Five Hundred, Hacktivist) the first track from the duo is “The Blood Never Dried” and with those three names in the ring, its safe to say that the project offers a lot of intrigue.

Now all the who, what and why has been covered off, what about the actual song? Well if the first bite is with the eye then the artwork that accompanies the piece gives off early 2000’s MySpace era vibes with hint at the kind of thing that bands like American Hardcore institution Nora were putting out. However while that might be a distant echo, “The Blood Never Dried” is an almost entirely different beast. Vocally Clark French is in the same ball park as Stampin’ Ground and Romeo Must Die frontman Adam Frakes-Sime, his harsh delivery having similar tones about it to the point you could just picture him screaming “Officer Down!“. While that gives the track instant appeal in that it sounds familiar to a point, sonically this one will leave you like a deer caught in the headlights. That’s because Sam Manchin does something that you might not have heard from him before. His instrumental is cut from the cloth of Technical Death Metal with bruising seven and eight string guitars delivering the sonic weight to match the harsh nature of the vocals. Programming brings in a horror aesthetic to the soundscape with eerie, haunting sounds creeping into the mix, sending a chill down the spine. It might not quite reach the same level as Ten56 but there definite comparisons there in the way that the soundscape has been designed to have an unsettling edge. A balance between the urgent riffage and brutal vocals is broken momentarily in the most left field way imaginable, the band opting for the soothing sounds of a saxophone to over weighty staccato riff breaks in place of where you might expect a guitar solo. Its been done in more avant-garde circles before by bands like Rivers Of Nihil but here where it shouldn’t work on paper at least, it blows the mind in reality. It very much looks like this could be a fruitful partnership going forward because this first cut is the real deal [8.5/10]