Bleeding Through
The Great Fire
Rise Records

There is no getting away from the fact that listening to anything by Orange County bruisers Bleeding Through is akin to being smashed around the head with sledgehammer. You can tart it up with haunting keyboards and whatever but, at the end of the day, the backbone of the Bleeding Through sound is circle-pit inducing, Slayer-inspired metal/hardcore.

And The Great Fire is no different. A grinding intro wails into opener Faith In Fire, a snarling couple of minutes jammed full of full-force blasting that leaves you little time to catch your breath as Goodbye To Death continues the relentless slamfest. “This is your final hour” screams built-like-a-brick-shithouse vocalist Brandan Schieppati before the band smash into the black metal tinged hardcore anthem Final Hours. Now, while there is a danger that cocktail of keyboard-peppered blast beats could turn into a gruesome mess due to the force its delivered, the band certainly know how to rein in the chaos as the track soon morphs into something that would appeal to your average Behemoth / Dimmu Borgir fan as well as your Hatebreed fan. It is this ability to refine their sound into something quite powerful and dramatic that gives Bleeding Through that edge and stops their metallic fury turning into a messy blur of speed. Starving Vultures is more keyboard-soaked hell while One By One is just ninety-odd seconds of hateful metal – a real teeth loosener of a track.

The problem with listening to Bleeding Through on disc is that their sound is just so utterly unrelenting that it leaves you feeling like your head has been stamped on. Bleeding Through have made sure that you will not be able to ignore The Great Fire but, be warned, you’ll have to be made of steel to see it through from start to finish.

Release Date : January 20 2012

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Review by Graham Finney