“Heaven Collides” from Makes My Blood Dance

Metal has always been about celebrating intensity of all varieties, and in this sense, the new single “Heaven Collides” from Makes My Blood Dance is no different. Both sonically and lyrically, this is a track that espouses the very epitome of championing dominant attitudes; “Heaven Collides” is about the core of a relationship between melody and amped-up overdrive in more ways than one, as I see it, and it utilizes one heck of a heavy riff structure to do so. Shaking and quaking in all the right ways, this latest release from Makes My Blood Dance could be one of the best metal songs I’ve heard all year long.   The music video is as frills-free as it gets without being a barebones DIY effort, and I particularly like how well it blends the lyrics with the band’s already colorful undertow of intensity. It has a cinematic chill to its concept, but it’s not overambitious for what the band is capable of at all.

These guys aren’t one of the biggest in all of rock, but here, they’re not trying to be – their priorities are right where they belong, which puts them a step above quite a few of their peers in and outside of the underground this summer.   Equal potency isn’t often afforded to the vocal and guitar parts in a hard rock or heavy metal song, but that’s partially why I think the dynamic in “Heaven Collides” works as well as it does – it’s somewhat untried, and ironically the band wears the look better than anyone else I’ve seen attempting it in the past. Seamless physicality is the cornerstone component of this single, and because no one in Makes My Blood Dance has an ego about their role in the master mix, we’re getting a throttling performance out of their camp that feels as selfless as it does cohesive around every twist and turns.

While some would probably have preferred a slightly increased bassline presence in this track – and justifiably so – I think the leaner sound that Makes My Blood Dance ultimately decided to go with is a little more becoming of their overall musical profile. It reminds me a bit of early Dragonforce, which was debatably the band’s most efficient period before parting out their sound for a refurbished look in later years. “Heaven Collides” has a similarly themed bend in its lyrics and melodic might, but I don’t think anyone is accusing the song’s creators of being derivative – it’s simply too passionate a cut for that to be the case.  

I didn’t know much about Makes My Blood Dance before I got into “Heaven Collides” this month, but the effort that they put into this latest release is just too powerful to be ignored – even by the most discriminating of music critics. You don’t have to be a hardcore headbanger to get into the message and the melodies that are to be discovered when listening to “Heaven Collides,” but for those of us who are, it’s a seriously provocative track that doesn’t waste any of our time with pointless synthetics.  

Mindy McCall