Bleeding Through – Nine
Release Date: 14th January 2025
Label: SharpTone Records
Order/Stream
Genre: Metalcore, Black Metal, Thrash, Hardcore.
FFO: Darkest Hour, Unearth, I Killed the Prom Queen.
Review By: Jeff Finch
Sometimes, going into an album with no preconceived notions or expectations is the best thing that can happen to a listener: everything is organic, from the initial reactions to the images the music conjures up in one’s mind. Having only taken in a bit of the discography of today’s focus Bleeding Through, when it was time to play the album, the mind was a blank slate and, by the end of the album, that blank slate had been pummeled into the ground by the eleven tracks on their newest effort Nine.
Over the course of Nine, listeners are treated to blast beats, an all out percussive assault, infectious groove, mammoth breakdowns, and a main vocal performance that will have its listeners wanting to fistfight a mountain when all is said and done. In the first two tracks, Gallows and Our Brand is Chaos, we see the band hit us with blast beats, black metal shrieks, deep gutturals, and a background symphony, yielding a purely haunting atmosphere, a warning to all that this is just the start. Though the attempt at a clean vocal chorus derails Gallows’ pace and rhythm, the frenetic energy and savagery of the vast majority does more than enough to save it from itself.
At other junctures the band switches over to thrash metalcore, the filthy, fast drumming working in tandem with the chainsaw guitars and layered vocals to sound like a demonic entity raised from the depths on Dead, But So Alive the insertion of blast beats making the song even more frenetic, while the chorus drags the song back down, clean vocals once again not working in these circumstances, an obvious weak point for the group. Meanwhile on Lost in Isolation, the groove is simply unrelenting, the Shadows Fall adjacent opening giving way to background organs that paint bleak pictures as blast beats and an onslaught of double bass leads the charge, giving way to a super melodic solo that keeps itself from flashiness until the very end, a burst of shredding fretwork out of nowhere to make our heads spin.
Speaking of Shadows Fall, they make an appearance on penultimate track War Time, a track rife with blast beats, venomous vocals, relentless double bass, and an admittedly weak chorus that does lead into a sick breakdown with thick, beefy riffs, a later iteration of a clean chorus much more in line with the song, not sounding out of place as it transitions into positively demonic, layered harsh vocals.
At various points on this album, piano pierces the sonic veil, a welcome surprise and a well utilized feature, occupying the entirety of interlude Last Breath, and creating hauntingly dark atmosphere on final track Unholy Armada, the latter filling in the gaps left by the lack of musical heft from the main band, sharing space with a brilliant organ performance, pulling a listener’s attention away from everything else to maintain focus on the haunting beauty. Hell, on Path to Our Disease, we’re greeted with a tandem guitar and piano solo later in the track, the interlude immediately proving to be merely an introduction to the piano and not its only act.
With their newest record Nine, Bleeding Through has crafted a metal album that manages to stay pretty fresh in a genre full of artists that copy and paste and dilute the impact and intensity of the genre. Missteps aside, including some quite cringe inducing choruses peppered throughout, Nine is still an album with more than enough power, bite, venom, and chaos to warrant multiple listens; saturated though the genre may be, there are moments on this one that allow the band to truly stand out, and that is impressive work.
(4 / 5)
