Bleeding Through - Love Will Kill All (Album Review)

Bleeding Through - Love Will Kill All
Released: May 25th, 2018

Bleeding Through Line up:

Brandan Schieppati | Vocals
Brian Leppke | Guitar
Derek Youngsma | Drums
Ryan Wombacher | Bass
Marta Peterson | Keyboards

Bleeding Through online:

Facebook
Twitter

Once upon a time, comeback albums used to be a rare thing. These days, you could close your eyes and point in any direction and hit a band making a comeback. True story, give it a try. Unfortunately, many of these bands screw their return. The albums fail to recapture the magic of what made them great in the first place and ultimately end up being a bigger travesty than Malcolm Turnbull cutting in line at your local pub.

So where do we find the legendary Bleeding Through six years after their last album graced our ears?

Opening with ‘Darkness A Feeling I Know’ the haunting organ work, gives way to Brandan Schieppati vocals as he sings to the heavens about some lovelorn soul who has seemingly scorned him. It sets the tone of Love Will Kill All perfectly and encapsulates many of the themes on the album. This builds to a crescendo before morphing into ‘Fade Into The Ash’ - quintessential Bleeding Through, it’s a persistent reminder of everything this band does so well. It’s crushing in delivery and offers one of the best clean choruses on the album, recalling such contemporaries as Killswitch Engage, if they beat you in the face with a rock.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqUnbCBDMHs&w=640&h=360]

Subsequently, ‘This Cold World’ sees the band really accentuate the majestic keyboard work of Marta Peterson as she weaves haunting carnivalesque sounds over Schieppati screams in the chorus before the song returns with an all-out slaughter of guitar work forcing you to consider neck surgery after your head has fallen off from the sheer ferocity.

The biggest standouts from the album are ‘No One From Nowhere’ and ‘Slave’ with the former just smashing you in the face with a sledgehammer of otherworldly riffs from the wonderful Brian Leppke with Schieppati screaming “I am oblivion/now follow me” straight from the deepest depths of hell. While the latter features those black metal influenced edges the band has come to be known for with (insert vocalist) sounding as pissed off as ever. It’s going to be a great one for the mosh pit.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0n49fHITC88&w=640&h=360]

Unfortunately, not everything hits the mark on this album. The clean vocals are hit or miss at best with the clean passages in certain songs, more importantly, ‘Dead Eyes’ being quite frankly awkward and downright cringeworthy. Aside from this, they also come off as unimportant and merely a formality. The songs also bleed into one another with very little to distinguish them from other songs within the album as a whole.

Overall, there’s enough here to keep fans of Bleeding Through happy. But like many bands who return after a lengthy hiatus, there appears to be some hesitation from the band to step out of their comfort zone. The reality is, there’s nothing on this album you haven’t heard the band do better before. But that doesn’t mean it’s a bad album. It’s a good album. But it’s a safe album.

It’s just nothing on the world crushing level of Declaration.

Bleeding Through - Love Will Kill All tracklisting

1.Darkness, A Feeling I Know
2.Fade Into The Ash
3.End Us
4.Cold World
5.Dead Eyes
6.Buried
7.No Friends
8.Set Me Free
9.No One From No Where
10.Remains
11.Slave
12.Life

Rating 7/10
Love Will Kill All is Out Friday, May 25th 2018 via SharpTone Records. Grab a copy here.
Reviewed by: Kaydan Howison