Liverpool Sound and Visio Rating 8.5/10
You cannot ignore what is Deep In The Blood, the signs of your own humanity, the ecstasy of life, and even when others blood may run cold as the story continues, it is, in the end, their loss, their problem, for understanding what drives you, is in itself the point of having heart, courage and pleasure continuously running through your veins.
The combination that comes out of nowhere is one that injects fortune into the mind of the seeker, the one who unceasingly pursues the next form in which to wrestle with, who knows there is something else that survives in the blood, that it is honey that makes the world a sweeter proposition that might otherwise be the case.
For Mudcats Blues Trio member Chris Wragg, this sense of delivered fortune comes in the form of Greg Copeland, and with guest performers Grey Guy, Shirley King, Marcus Coll and Joel White and places the music at the very forefront of the experience; as in life, it is not about the individual, it is how we can, seamlessly if possible, find ways to co-exist and then embrace each other and create a piece of art so beautiful that we can forget the troubles that blind us and haunt our every other move.
Deep In The Blood is where songs such as Five Long Years, My Home Is The Horizon, I’ll Cut You Down, Why You So Cold With Me, My Business Ain’t Superstition and the album title track all bring hope to the soul, they place themselves with the sincerity becoming of two gentlemen of the genre, and all the while they offer a route to escapism which is compelling and essential in today’s bitterly divided society.
The point of being entrenched in the blood is that it shows that the righteousness and reliability is more than just skin deep, it is a source of perfection to which others can look out for across other forms of the genre, and in life itself. There is no need to be cruel to get what you want in life, just show how much the world means to you, that art is not only imbedded in your D.N.A., but is so far Deep In The Blood that it cannot do anything but pump the heart to the extremes of beauty and willing.
Ian D. Hall