Blood Stain Child have released "Forge", the first thing out ahead of the twenty fifth anniversary of their debut next year.
Twenty five years is the number that reframes them. When this band started putting trance synths and four to the floor under melodic death metal, that combination had no name and no audience outside Japan, and the European bands who later built careers on something adjacent to it were still in school. Thirty seven releases later the formula is theirs and nobody disputes it.
The line up has turned over repeatedly, which for a band this long in a scene this small is survival rather than instability. What has not changed is the proportion: the metal half stays recognisably melodic death, and the electronic half stays genuinely electronic rather than decorative.
"Forge" is the opening move of the anniversary rather than the anniversary itself. The debut landed in 2002, so there is a year of this to come.