If you long for the days when rock'n'roll frontmen had not only teeth but also fangs (i.e., the late 1980s), then Dax Riggs is probably your guy. Riggs is a goth-rock lead singer to rival pale-faced forbears like Peter Murphy and early Ian Astbury, but he also has some of the latter's later fondness for late-60s psychedelic rock. He's a guy who can lace up a pair of leather pants with a sense of purpose and probably bite the head off of whatever hapless bite-sized creature is within grasp. But for all the heat and hellfire he calls up on We Sing of Only Blood or Love, the album is undercooked, coming in light on ideas and heavy on the leaden death-blues hokum.
As the singer for sludgy Southern metal band Acid Bath and more recently the swamp-rock outfit Deadboy & the Elephantmen, Riggs established a brooding sepulchral style that paired theatrically spooky imagery with soulful Bowie-esque crooning. Blood or Love is his first record under his given name and it largely sticks to this territory. Riggs can still take lyrics that would look better tattooed on the arm of an extra in Wild Angels-- lines like "living is suicide" or "Night is the notion/ We are the explosion"-- and make them stand up in their affectation-ridden graves.
But nothing on Blood or Love can stay on its feet for very long. Most of the album's songs seem hurried, rising up into squalls of fury only to fizzle out and die around the two-minute mark. "Living Is Suicide" starts our dark and soulful with bluesy lamentations giving way to an expansive glam sing-along that runs out faster than a tube of Robert Smith's lipstick. A solid backing band composed of Superwolf and Chavez guitarist Matt Sweeney (who also produced) along with Endless Boogie drummer Andy MacLeod and a few other Brooklyn-based heavies is generally wasted, as they slash through buzzing and chugging arrangements that end before they even begin with nary a breakdown or solo in sight.
On the other hand, there's too much of Riggs vampyric subject matter and the lack of subtlety becomes slightly oppressive as Blood or Love winds on. Go ahead and let Riggs take you to the haunted house of his mind in "A Spinning Song", then let him take you to the haunted desert of "Forgot I Was Alive". But by the time he's bludgeoning you with the haunted circus on "Wall of Death" it's time to drop the black velvet curtains.
Talented, individual, and somewhat freaky, Dax Riggs is like the smart kid in high school that wears all black all of the time. You totally could have been best friends with him had he only stopped breaking off your conversations to obsess over J. O'Barr lithographs and Samurai ethics. Only with Riggs it's Satan and images of unknowable suffering. All told, both might have been more palatable if accompanied by a few more guitar solos.
