Bleed – Bleed

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7.0

• Band:
  Bleed
• Duration: 00:36:03
• Available since: 02/05/2025
• Label:

• 20 Buck Spin

Streaming not yet available

With their debut full-length, simply entitled “Bleed”, the Bleed Texans consolidate and expand the path traced with the lucky EP “Somebody's Closer”. Curiously published by the 20 Buck Spin, a label known for its Death Metal catalog, this long distance debut confirms expectations in stylistic terms, pushing the sound of the US group in even more immersive territories.
From the first notes, the disc therefore re -proposes that imprint that has generated so much enthusiasm around the band: a hybrid and atmospheric metal, perpetually pervaded by a sense of oceanic melancholy, where the groove of the riffs bites in every trace with enveloping melodies and a pronounced sense of suspension. The Shoegaze influence is more marked here than ever, recalling the most ethereal intuitions of the Defones or by proposing that alchemy between tension and rarefaction that characterized – see defilure or hum – quite alternative rock/metal of the late nineties and the beginning of the new millennium.
Compared to the mini, the long distance debut expands the breath of the songs, maintaining the compactness of the structures, but accentuating the hypnotic repetition of the sound patterns. The guitars stratify distortion, building a sound wall that oscillates between repressed anger and languid contemplation. The battery work, although not particularly varied, pulsates with intensity, underlining the underground dynamism of the traces.
The real distinctive element of the disc, for better or for worse, remains the voice of the guitarist/singer Ryan Hughes: his clear and phlegmatic stamp contributes to creating a suspended and dreamy atmosphere, but his choice to remain constantly on elegite registers, without significant changes of intensity, ends up generating a certain homogeneity between the songs. This aspect, combined with the band's tendency to reiterate similar schemes in the structure of the compositions, leads to a slight sense of repetitiveness that was not perceptible in the most concise format of the EP.
Despite this, “Bleed” is not however an album that drags itself or that risks boring: with a duration of thirty -six minutes, the band knows when to stop, avoiding indulging in prolisity that could dampen the emotional impact of the work too much. Some moments emerge with particular strength, thanks to more marked variations in the sound grain or a more incisive use of the backing vocals, which in some passages are more aggressive and viscerally engaging. In this sense, the collaboration with the Static Dresss in the most eventful “Enjoy Your Stay” or the most relaxed character, dotted with a sinuous game of percussion, of “shallow”, immediately be noted.
Ultimately, the album is configured as well as a work that, although not radically innovating, consolidates the identity of the Bleed and affirms their potential in an underground panorama that increasingly welcomes the contaminations between shoegaze and metal. If on the one hand perhaps a greater diversification between the songs is missing, on the other the disc leaves a persistent impression, like a long wave that continues to echo even after its vanish.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sebmx8knly8