Bleeding Through – Nine
Bleeding Through – Nine
Sharptone Records
Release Date: 14/02/2025
Review by Rory Bentley
9 /10
My word it’s good to have Bleeding Through back. The Orange County Blackened Metalcore legends have been on a tear since their reformation, dropping an excellent comeback album in 2018’s “Love Will Kill All” and destroying stages over the globe with sparing but incredibly potent and intense live performances. How appropriate, then, that a band so quintessentially oozing with Gothic Romance and heartbreak should be dropping their 9th studio album on Valentine’s Day. We’re gonna skirt over the phoned-in album title, because everything within is anything but.
‘Gallows’ is as brutal and dramatic an opener as you could possibly want from the band, conjuring fire and brimstone with searing Melodeath riffage and Marta Demmel’s ornate keyboard orchestration. Brandan Schieppati sounds as feral and demented as ever on the mic, like the most jacked preacher of the apocalypse you’ve ever seen, and his impassioned baritone croons are still a great distinguishing touch from the more cliched boyband approach of many of his Metalcore vocalist peers.
As florid and overblown as the band’s sound has become as they’ve evolved, there should be no doubt that they are still very much a Hardcore band. Single ‘Our Brand Is Chaos’ is exhibit A in this assertion. ‘Fuck with us and find out’ is not a statement you’re likely to hear coming from the pale reedy frame of anyone fronting the Symphonic Black Metal bands that influence Bleeding Through. The song is full of devastating beatdowns and scream along hooks that will ensure the snapping of limbs and spines in pits accross the globe for many years to come and it does the whole Symphonic Deathcore thing so much better than the vast majority of the trendier bands that have popped up in the band’s absence. No shade on them (you know the ones) but these lot are the daddies and mommy of this shit and it really shows in the way each violent transition is crafted.
Marta’s increased vocal presence has been a fantastic addition to the band’s sound in latter years. She’s always been good for blood curdling backing shrieks live, but her powerful melodic vocals are a game changer when unleashed on “Nine”. The climactic outro on stunning single ‘Dead, But So Alive’, is perhaps the finest example of this, as she and Brandan dovetail counter vocals over a backdrop of chaotic crescendo bluster. The main chorus has been lodged in my swede since their rip roaring destruction of Damnation Festival last November and it feels like a setlist mainstay from here on out.
Not content with merely writing excellent songs worthy of their esteemed catalogue to get me all hyped, the band decide to send me over the edge with guest spots from a murderer’s row of 2000s Metalcore royalty, with God Forbid lending some guitar hero pyrotechnics to the soaring ‘Lost In Isolation’, Comeback Kid bringing the bouncy dive bar energy to ‘I Am Resistance’, and my personal faves Shadows Fall bring the thunder to penultimate rager ‘War Time’, where it’s good to hear the dredded beast they call Brian Fair howling away over some filthy grooves.
Wrapping up with the suitably blackened and ominous ‘Unholy Armada’ the album cements its place at the business end of the band’s impeccable catalogue while showing peers and pupils of the game alike what truly great, innovative Metalcore looks and sounds like. It’s wonderful to have them back!
TRACKLISTING:
1. Gallows 4:39
2. Our Brand Is Chaos 4:35
3. Dead, But So Alive 3:27
4. Hail Destruction 4:35
5. Lost In Isolation (feat. God Forbid) 4:01
6. Last Breath 1:47
7. Path To Our Disease 3:19
8. I Am Resistance (feat. Comeback Kid) 3:38
9. Emery 3:56
10. War Time (feat. Shadows Fall) 4:16
11. Unholy Armada 4:00
LINKS:
Disclaimer: This review is solely the property of Rory Bentley and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this review, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
