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vote
8.5
- Bands:
BLOODLET - Duration: 00:48:22
- Available from: 03/15/1996
- Label:
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Victory Records
“I am not your Christ, I do not bleed for you”.
If it is true that, in the world of heavy music, the Florida/nineties combination is traced first and foremost to the Tampa death metal scene, with bands of the caliber of Obituary, Morbid Angel and Deicide defining the coordinates of an era that has entered the imagination collective of thousands of listeners, neglecting the contribution of the American state to the hardcore cause of that period would mean missing out on an undergrowth of names no less dense and luxuriant, capable with their exploits of leaving a tangible mark on the genre and on what it would soon take on the common definition of metalcore.
In this regard, we could mention in no particular order Strongarm, Shai Hulud (already guests of this column with the sensational “That Within Blood Ill-Tempered”), Poison the Well, Morning Again, Brethren… and Bloodlet, precisely, a quartet of Orlando can be framed from many points of view as an aberration within a panorama often linked to straight edge, social and redemption (if not downright Christian) themes. In practice, the exact opposite of what, since the very first cries in the form of demo tapes and seven inches, has characterized the artistic poetics of our band, immersed in a scenario of discomfort and negativity completely comparable to that of certain extreme metal, and which, not surprisingly, over time, earned it the label 'evilcore'.
A sound which, keeping in mind the habitat of this subtropical region, with its scorching heat and its expanses of marshes, actually seems to rise from the slime, from the rancid, from the dirt, manifesting itself to the senses as a flow that is nothing short of oppressive and intent on seeking in the midtempo the way to express his hatred.
The peculiarities of the project, which immediately allowed him to stand out from the crowd and to win a contract from Victory Records, which fired “Entheogen” in March 1996, are in fact to be found in the darkness of the atmospheres and in the stone-crushing heaviness of the rhythmic, reluctant to marry eventful tempos in favor of a slow and muddy pace of clear sludge and death/doom derivation, with the intoxicating visions of Eyehategod and Buzzoven (on the one hand) and the putrefied ones of the authors of “Cause of Death” (on the other) to blend with the metallic hardcore at the base of the proposal.
If you connect anything but recommendable ones like Dwid Helion's Integrity or James “Human Furnace” Bulloch's Ringworm, they were going to contaminate/disfigure their hardcore punk roots with Slayerian derivations, the group composed of Scott Angelacos (vocals), Matt Easley (guitar ), Charlie King (drums) and Art Legere (bass) turned his gaze to even more abominable and nefarious sound worlds, putting together a narrative in which every element, from the frontman's bark to the ultra-low riffs of the six strings, passing through the monstrous and tribal groove of the rhythm section, still today smacks of physical and spiritual degradation; a song lasting just under fifty minutes for white thrash destined to wander around the suffocating suburbs of the South of the United States, among syringes, resentment and alcohol.
It goes without saying that the charm of a work like this lies primarily in the climate of tension expressed by the songwriting and in the burdensomeness of the structures, rather than in the changes of pace during listening, but once the caterpillar-like progress of good part of the tracklist, still very influential for a certain type of hardcore/metal (just think of Xibalba), it would be rough to dismiss Bloodlet as blacksmiths devoid of atmospheric sensitivity. Either for the geographical origin, or for the lesson learned from the aforementioned masters of sludge, already during the opener “Brainchild” we come across a smoky, narcoleptic and blues-like break that pushes the discussion of the formation beyond the shores of early metalcore , a sign of an approach to writing that is not necessarily brutal and percussive, but it is with the colossal “The Triumph” and its digression based on acoustic chimes and darkening brushstrokes that the ambition and personality of the project definitively come to light (it becomes so to speak…), dragging the listener into an infernal swamp where calm is only apparent and evil still lurks.
In essence, we are talking about one of the most destabilizing secrets kept by the stars and stripes hardcore movement, on a par with a “Those Who Fear Tomorrow” or a “Heretic”; a nihilistic album like few others in the genre, the incipit of a career that has continued between full-lengths (including the remarkable “The Seraphim Fall” from 1998), EPs (the no longer recent “Viper in Hand” from 2020) and sporadic live appearances on US soil, always in the name of the darkest self-destruction. In times of often harmless and plastic metal/death-core sounds, let this monolith crush you.
Daniel D`Amico for SANREMO.FM