Review: Bleeding Through - The Great Fire

 Since 1999, Orange County's Bleeding Through have been viewed as one of the original bands to take elements of hardcore punk and play it with a greater heavy metal and death metal influence. Though they themselves despise the term "metalcore" being used towards their name, the influence they've shaped on bands of the genre is undeniable. They're respected enough in the metal and hardcore scenes and have a devoted enough following as a band and clearly have no bitterness in the fact that former guitarist Jona Weinhofen is now gaining major success and popularity now that he's tearing things up in Bring Me the Horizon. Instead, Bleeding Through have continued their mission to musically assault all their listeners on their latest offering, The Great Fire.

 This album sees Bleeding Through returning with their fiery brand of hardcore mixed with their death metal influence and symphonic backdrops giving the band the overall sound of Misfits-meets-Therion-meets-Suffocation delivered with astonishing force and brutality.
 The symphonic backdrops allow tacks like Goodbye to Death and Step Back in Line to gain that extra sense of epic grandness in it's melodic properties paired with it's darker characteristics of doom. Of course the performance of the band always works with this to allow for a relentless hardcore pounding, in the form of constant breakdowns the band provide which succeed in sounding intimate and as intense as they can, causing for a grander flow to take place with the sweeping symphonies. This ideal does allow a greater negative emotional impact to shine through the album but also allows for a more celebratory uplifting sound, namely on Trail of Seclusion. Maybe the band didn't intend for that actually...
 Bleeding Through also unleash their symphonic black metal influence onto this album effectively and tracks like Starving Vultures and Walking Dead have qualities that would be easy to identify on a Cradle of Filth or Dimmu Borgir album.
 More surprisingly alongside this are the more subtle but identifiable poppier techniques that sneak their way onto the album, such as the musical cutting effect heard on guitar parts in Final Hours that shows maybe they have been taking a good look at what their former axe-man's been up to in BMTH as well as the synthesized drum pounding heard at the start of Deaf Ears which only suggest that Bleeding Through are trying to be metalcore's Nine Inch Nails.
 So, The Great Fire pretty much ticks all the boxes for a definitive Bleeding Through. Relentless hardcore assault with death metal influences, dark symphonic backdrops and frantic riff-athons and breakdowns everywhere. Nothing more, nothing less. Understand? Good.

 Bleeding Through's The Great Fire is out now via Rise Records.