Review by Daniel for Bleeding Through - Love Will Kill All (2018)
I’d heard quite a bit of Californian metalcore outfit Bleeding Through while preparing the monthly The Revolution playlists but had never felt the need to investigate them further upon until this point. Perhaps I’ve been put off by their associations with the more melodic side of the genre or it may be because they simply don’t seem all that likely to appeal to my taste. I’m not too sure but my commitment to the Hall of Judgement & a site with the highest level of accuracy in regard to our genre-tagging has finally brought me face to face with my very first Bleeding Through album & I’m gonna do my best to keep an open mind.
As is very much the norm with the more well-known metalcore acts, “Love Will Kill All” is a really well-produced & executed record with polished & shiny performances from all of the band members. It’s a big, in-your-face collection of short & catchy metal tunes that’s made to appeal to a particular audience. You see, while Bleeding Through certainly integrate various external influences into their sound to good effect, they also showcase all of the signature traits of the metalcore genre at the same time so fans will never find themselves feeling the slightest bit alienated. I wouldn’t describe Bleeding Through as sticking to the conventional metalcore model here but neither would I say that the album is a melodic metalcore release either. It kinda sits in the middle with the band jumping from a straight down the line aggressive tune to a more melodic one with a clean-sung chorus hook quite consistently. If anything I’d probably suggest that the melodic side wins out in the end but a dual tagging is probably the most appropriate result.
The points of difference for “Love Will Kill All” are twofold. On the one hand you have a clear melodic death metal influence with At The Gates seeming to be the obvious point of reference through the driving, up-tempo yet melodic tremolo-picked riffage. Then we also see a clear melodic black metal influence in the use of gothic symphonics & well-executed blast-beats. Cradle of Filth is undoubtedly the source of those sounds. Having never been the biggest Cradle of Filth fan, I have to admit to struggling a bit with the overly melodramatic gothicisms on offer even though they do make for something a little different which is certainly required with a record like this one. The clean choruses on the more melodic tracks remind me quite a bit of Fear Factory so I wouldn’t be at all surprised to find that they were somewhat of an inspiration too.
One of the problems here though is the more generic elements of Bleeding Through’s sound as they kinda overshadow their more creative ones. The breakdowns are very much the standard model for metalcore & whenever they pop up I find myself snoozing a bit. The vocals of front man Brandan Schieppati are also terribly common. I mean he sounds EXACTLY like every other metalcore vocalist in America & that’s a big detractor for me personally. There are a couple of really enjoyable tracks here though & they generally occur when Bleeding Through simply release the shackles & go for broke like they do on album highlight “Buried” or the pretty decent “Cold World”. The rest of the album seems to drift into areas of insignificance though I’m afraid, even though there’s nothing particularly terrible here either.
At the end of the day I just don’t think I’m the target audience for a record like “Love Will Kill All”. I'd imagine that it’s exactly what the band were trying to achieve & that it’s disappointed very few of their rabid fanbase but it’s simply not something that would generally appeal to me. In fact, the only reason I’ve even found myself listening to it is to assist Andi with his Hall of Judgement entry to have it removed from The Horde & in that undertaking Andi will be receiving a resounding YES vote from me as (despite the At the Gates influence) there’s absolutely no way that this is a death metal record.
For fans of Unearth, The Agonist & early Shadows Fall.