Why Stranger Things' Jamie Campbell Bower started an experimental metal band called BloodMagic
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Looking into the eyes of Jamie Campbell Bower, you wouldn’t know he’s the manifestation of pure evil. Well, not literally, but the actor/musician has attained iconic status in recent years for his portrayal of Vecna, the big bad lurking in the shadows of Netflix series Stranger Things. It turns out that otherworldly dimensions and demonic presences play a pretty big part in his new band, BloodMagic, too.
“BloodMagic is a vessel,” he begins, and we have to resist the nagging urge to check there’s no Demogorgon sneaking up behind us. “A vessel for me to express myself and my beliefs in a way that feels both somewhat familiar and terrifying at the same time.”
Released back in April, BloodMagic’s debut single, Death / Rebirth, set the internet alight. Part of that was undeniably the hook of ‘Vecna has a metal band!’ but there is equally something fascinating about the band’s sound. A mix of brooding post-hardcore, throat-shredding black metal breakouts and gorgeous alt metal melodies, BloodMagic feel like a genreblurring collision of Deftones, Black Peaks and Zeal & Ardor.
The song’s striking music video certainly didn’t hurt, either. Jamie dons a mask that sits somewhere between Hannibal and Bane, staring ominously into camera, before the song kicks off and we’re treated to shots of him lying clothed in a bathtub before being drowned in inky black waters. There are also shots of BloodMagic playing their instruments, and Jamie kneeling before a feminine figure in full leather dominatrix gear.
“It’s about leaving one world to get to the next,” Jamie explains. “We’re not a religious band, but I really like the idea of certain imagery in religion, and it’s a good way of condensing these wild questions we have about life. So thematically I think Death / Rebirth is the beginning of the journey.”
For BloodMagic themselves, the journey only officially began in December 2023, but Jamie’s aspirations as a musician stretch back a couple of decades. Although a prolific actor, Jamie has often indulged his love of music over the years. Most notably, he was the frontman and guitarist in London punk band Counterfeit from 2015 until 2020, when they split. He also shares earlier memories of playing as part of London’s indie scene in the mid- to late-2000s, fondly recalling nights spent “upstairs at Koko or in the Mean Fiddler”.
“Counterfeit was a really exciting project for me,” he recalls. “I had just gotten sober, so it was a really exciting period of time, as I had all this energy inside me that had to be put somewhere. I really learned a lot about myself and my intentions. We also learned how to navigate this industry – we started out very DIY, much as I have with BloodMagic, and got signed to Xtra Mile, did an independent release, and as things progressed moved to Universal… that’s where things started to unravel.”
After Counterfeit split, Jamie continued to make music as a solo artist, releasing material on YouTube. Songs like I Am, Heaven In Your Eyes and Run On play with a sense of dark Americana that’s present on Death / Rebirth, but the music was decidedly removed from the realm of metal. Things changed when he started collaborating with Kyle Adams, a Seattle-based drummer who was gaining some online traction for videos of his playing.
The pair connected over Instagram – imagine getting a follow request from Vecna! – and soon Jamie was sharing demos for songs that he would later use as BloodMagic. Everything locked in when Jamie decided to invite Kyle to LA to shoot the Death / Rebirth video, asking him to form a band together.
“It was a big ‘Fuck yeah!’ from me, obviously!” Kyle says with a chuckle. “Hearing those songs, my reactions were very visceral, because they were completely not what I was expecting. I knew of Jamie mostly from Stranger Things, but I’d read an interview with him in passing once where he mentioned Norma Jean, so it was like, ‘Oh yeah, he has a metal/ hardcore side to him.’”
The pair would explore that “metal/ hardcore” side more in their new band, discussions about their shared love of Every Time I Die sending them down rabbit holes, where they’d listen to post-ETID bands Better Lovers and Many Eyes, as well as newer artists such as Bungler. With BloodMagic, they’ve pooled disparate influences together to create something entirely new.
“What’s nice right now is that we have a lot of space to build,” Kyle says. “We might have a creative rush, but that’s more about having something to say rather than feeling the need to say something.”
At the time of writing, Death / Rebirth is the band’s only public single, but by Jamie’s reckoning the band have written about “95%” of their debut album. He also admits that, stylistically and thematically, Death / Rebirth is the perfect primer for what to expect from BloodMagic going forwards, as they aim to create a cohesive audio-visual package that combines despair and catharsis.
“It has this dark heaviness to it, whilst still offering relief,” Jamie explains. “I feel like that’s something that will be a throughline throughout the record. There’s a song there called Shake The Lock, and the whole song is about crossing the River Styx and leaving purgatory to get to the first circles of Hell. It’s that ‘Abandon all hope ye who enter here’ thing.”
Death / Rebirth is available now.
