Review Summary: Bleeding Through are back and sound the same as ever.
If one was to attach a hackneyed aphorism to Bleeding Through's career it would be “If it ain't broke, don't fix it”. At Metalcore's rise to underground dominance at the beginning of the last decade, Bleeding Through made a name for themselves by combining the aggro-tough guy posturing of Hardcore with a fascination with Death Metal. The problem with this is that while Bleeding Through are far from broken, they are stagnant. Sure,
The Truth saw them smooth out some of their rough edges and garnered them more then their fair share of attention from various sides of the music press, although that was due more to the band's resident piece of eye candy Marta Peterson than to anything actually music related, but it was still just more of the same. So now on a new label and starting off their second decade as a band, Bleeding Through's eponymous album is exactly what we've come to expect from them: more of the same.
Between the one dimensional onslaught of tight, but glaringly repetitive riffs and an annoying reliance on uninventive breakdowns,
Bleeding Through is shot down before it even gets a chance to get off of the ground. Every track sounds like a retread of the track that preceded it, in so much that by the time the first half of the album has finished, the second half plays out like clock work, each time change and breakdown arriving just when you would expect it to like the across town express. Making things worse, Bleeding Through's ties with the Orange County, CA tough-guy Hardcore scene has them dipping into cliché gang-vocal shout outs whenever they run out of ideas. Topping things off, Brendan Schieppati's pissed off lyrical bent is grating and ridiculous. In the past it was easy to see that the source of his respect issues stemmed from his long standing dispute with Trustkill Records, but now that he's actually getting his royalty checks, his lyrics are reaching at best and downright laughable at their worst.
Bleeding Through's self-titled album is yet another Bleeding Through release that tries to skirt by on the bare minimum. For every good idea presented, there are three more trite and tired ideas weighted to it, dragging it down into the abyss. Hey, at least they're consistent.
