Brink and Chris Howorth saw the band departures as something positive and it would heavily influence the album. Brink says, "it's meant to be that they moved on and some other things in my life, it's so cool 'cause it's just like this brand new everything and it feels really awesome. And you're going to be able to hear it." Howorth said, "Jeff and Blake leaving kind of opened us up a bit and we went from the heart. We went a different route and it was more organic than ever before." Brink and Howorth reteamed with long-time producer,
Kevin Churko, at the Hideout in
Las Vegas to begin process on the album. Two songs emerged from those sessions, "Blood" and "Hello" (later became "From the Ashes"), which Howorth says brought them a new management deal with In De Goot. "
Blood" made its first appearance during In This Moment's set at the
Soundwave festival on February 26, 2012. Other new songs that made it onto their First Blood Tour included "Adrenalize", "
Whore", "Burn", and "You're Gonna Listen". The words to the album intro, "Rise with Me" were sung by Brink over
Dredg's "What Have I Done" on their 2011 tour as an intro. On May 14, 2012, it was announced that the album would be released on August 14, 2012, and that the first single, "Blood", would be released on June 12, 2012. A stream of the studio version premiered in a Cage Match battle on
WWBM on May 31, 2012. "You're Gonna Listen" was available for streaming on July 3, 2012. The album artwork and track listing for
Blood were unveiled on June 18, 2012.
Reissue A deluxe edition featuring a bonus disc of remixes was released on December 14, 2012. It was sold exclusively at all
Hot Topic stores and was to contain the
iTunes Store bonus track of
Nine Inch Nails' "
Closer", however the song was left off of the initial pressing. The bonus track was available as a free download to those who purchased the release. The error was corrected in later pressings.
Blood was re-released on May 31, 2013 in Europe as a two-disc edition titled "Reissue & Bonus" featuring the same track listing as the Hot Topic release. The album was reissued (this time as a special edition) for the third time on January 21, 2014. It contains the bonus track
Nine Inch Nails' "Closer" and includes a DVD titled
Blood at the Orpheum, which was shot on May 21, 2013 at the Orpheum Theater in Madison. This is the first live concert DVD shoot for the band. A cover of
Nine Inch Nails' "
Hurt" was performed at the show, however it was omitted on the release. A
Blu-ray version of the release was made available exclusively at
Best Buy retail stores and the audio of the concert was released digitally at the same time titled
Blood at the Orpheum. ==Critical reception==