(Andy Synn continues his murderous, on-off, love affair with OC Metalcore crew Bleeding Through)
It’s entirely appropriate that the cover for Bleeding Through‘s new album features a solitary figure standing at a crossroads… because that’s pretty much where Bleeding Through have stood their entire career.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve been a fan of the band for a long time – I think it was their seminal second album, Portrait of the Goddess, which first brought them to my attention, right before they had their big breakthrough with 2003’s This Is Love, This Is Murderous – but that doesn’t mean I’m blind to their flaws.
In particular they’ve always seemed torn between two competing urges – whether to double down on the more blisteringly aggressive and abrasively “blackened” side of their sound (as they did to such great effect prior to their hiatus with their 2010 self-titled and 2012’s blazing The Great Fire) or to take the poppier (and, inevitably, more popular) path by following in the footsteps of some of their more radio-friendly peers (as they did in the aftermath of This Is Love…’s unexpected success).
Their 2018 comeback album, Love Will Kill All found them trying to split the difference (which, to be clear, doesn’t have to be a bad thing) but ultimately resulted in a rather compromised record that didn’t leave much of an impression, and since then the only real insight into the band’s musical direction has been 2022’s Rage EP… all of which means there’s a lot of questions, and a lot of expectations, to be answered by NINE.
Now, despite what the album’s first single claimed, Bleeding Through‘s “brand” has never been “chaos” – in fact, in spite of the multivariate methods at their disposal (from blastbeats to breakdowns, string-skipping riffs and seething tremolo runs, gloomy, gothic keys and poppy, crooning cleans, etc) their songwriting has tended to favour a very limited range of patterns and motions, and that’s not massively changed this time around.
There’s nothing intrinsically wrong, however, with giving your audience what they want (a good song is a good song, whichever way you slice it, after all) and ass-kicking opener “Gallows” is a prime example of this, taking everything which made people fall in love with the band on …This Is Murderous and giving it a fresh lick of paint and an extra boost of energy while also erring ever-so-slightly towards the darker side of the group’s sound (with the more overtly melancholy tone of the track’s captivating, clean-sung chorus – which really highlights frontman Brandan Schieppati’s eloquent, emotive delivery – further adding to this overall impression).
Similarly, stand out songs like “Dead But So Alive” and “War Time” (which features a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it cameo from Shadows Fall frontman Brian Fair) mostly go for the “if it ain’t broke, don’t fit it” approach… but just because the band’s formula isn’t broken doesn’t mean it can’t be tweaked a little, and the injection of a little bit more vocal venom, a touch of extra oomph in the guitars, and an increased emphasis on the sublime back-and-forth between Schieppati and keyboardist Marta Demmel, all help elevate these songs above some of their stylistically similar (“Lost In Isolation”, “Path of Our Disease”) but slightly less successful siblings.
That being said – and bearing in mind that the sheer scope of the band’s Blackened/Gothic/Metallic/Hardcore hybrid can be both a strength and a weakness, as while it gives them endless creative options it doesn’t necessarily always result in the most creative solutions – two of the album’s biggest highlights, the hammering “Hail Destruction” and absolutely massive closer “Unholy Armada”, lean much more towards the Black Metal end of the spectrum, focussing on an even more heavily symphonic, crushingly rhythmic, attack that recalls the best and most brutal moments of Puritania…-era Dimmu Borgir while proving that, sometimes, less really is more.
I’ll grant you that “different” doesn’t always mean “better” – the relatively predictable, but relentlessly enjoyable, blast-propelled “I Am Resistance” (ft. a prominent, and welcome, guest appearance from Comeback Kid‘s Andrew Neufeld) plays things almost entirely straight and is all the better for it, while the stompy “Emery” gives Demmel a chance to really shine during the chorus but ultimately feels like two separate songs roughly stapled together – but it’s nice to know that while the band can still play to the crowds they’re also more than capable of fully embracing their darker, more blackened impulses without compromise every now and then.
Sure, much of NINE continues to make it clear that – just as the art suggests – the band are still a little torn between following the left-hand path or the path of least resistance… but it also proves that Bleeding Through are still more than capable of walking a tightrope between the two, and while they may slip occasionally they haven’t fallen off yet!