Review Summary: Equal parts sludge and metalcore, Bloodlet goes through 50 minutes without coming across as a total chore
In a genre in which made up terms are used to (poorly) describe a hardcore band’s style strive, it’s rather easy to appreciate whoever it was who first used the term “evilcore” to properly condense the sound of Bloodlet into words. The band’s music encapsulates what it must feel like to live in the heated, swampy hellhole that would be Florida, particularly with their debut full-length
Entheogen.
The riffage on the album is equal parts sludge/doom and equal parts metalcore, but the group manages to plow through 50 minutes without coming across as a total chore. For the most part, at least, but I’ll get into why that is later. To keep themselves fresh and to prevent the listener fatigue, Bloodlet throw in a few surprises such as the pseudo-blues break past the halfway point of the appropriately titled “The Triumph”. Though, these surprises are rather deep into the album’s tracklist.
Production-wise, this album is very low-end heavy, which makes for both satisfyingly rumbling tones for the riffs as well as nicely “ambient” tones during the more quiet parts (such as the chorus to “Annulment”). Oh, and who could forget that crisp, snappy snare? In fact, every instrument sounds good here and compliments one another. Except for the vocals.
It would be far to easy and immature of me to state that the vocalist sounds like he’s taking the worlds hardest sh
it on this album, so instead I’ll simply say that he sounds constipated. The problem with his vocals are that they sound strained and monotone: The entire album lacks variation to his voice, which is a problem they would fix on their follow-up LP
The Seraphim Fall. On that album the vocals would range from the same growling that appears on
Entheogen to whispers to even some singing, and it actually does help make the album seem less monotonous. Here, the feeling that each track kind of sounds the same lingers over the listener’s head as a result of the vocals, with the few surprising moments mentioned earlier really only being the real aspect of the album that prevents complete dismissal of the album’s variety.
Still, fans of brooding, dark music that ends with “-core” will find this album to be a nice little treat to listen to when browsing Last.FM at 2 AM. If one can forgive the forced vocal delivery and the occasional streaks of redundancy, then they can appreciate the heavy music and fine production for what it is: good sh
it.
