BLEEDING THROUGH DECLARE “WE’RE STILL NOT VERY GOOD” ON DECLARATION

“Finnis Fatalis Spei,” the opening of Bleeding Through’s latest, Declaration, is promising: it evokes a dark mood with a rich sense of melody and delightful faux-classical layering, complete with siren vocals by token hot girl/keyboard player Marta Peterson tastefully low in the mix. This all coheres into to morose buildup as the guitars predictably make their first appearance, climaxing with a tense final note, then a shitty-yet-effective sample to trigger the heaviness that will presumably follow. And because this is Bleeding Through, upon first listen, the cynic in you will be tempted to be immediately disappointed, to think that the first track – just under two minutes – will be the only thing remotely interesting about the album. Then the title track blasts in, with the grandiose intensity of decent symphonic black metal, almost taking a cue from Emperor’s Anthems to the Welkin at Dusk (arguably their most underrated effort) with tight, triggered drums, persistent guitars, and a subtle keyboard line like a mist around it all… then, twenty seconds in, the cynic in you is pleased, as a generic metalcore riff gets dropped in there like a dead kitten at a children’s birthday party, and you’re quickly reminded that this is Bleeding fucking Through, and that Bleeding fucking Through are still a generic metalcore band at heart. The rest of Declaration continues like this – flourishes of something interesting followed ever so dependably by Bleeding Through’s (and almost all post-Killswitch metalcore’s) hallmarks: generic breakdowns, reheated Swedish death riffs, forgettable vocals, and an overall air of crushing mediocrity. This is still Bleeding Through; shame on us for thinking that they’d make anything of themselves.

The initial goodwill established by the first two tracks quickly dissipates into annoyance as the band keeps pulling from the same bag of tricks they’ve always pulled from, then pulling from the new bag of tricks a little too often, essentially combining it with the old bag of tricks to create a giant bag of shitty tricks from which the band exclusively culls. Yes, while they draw heavily from new influences, they don’t draw on them enough to effect their sound, and still come off the same as they’ve always been: not very good. At best, it’s passable and bland; at its worst, it’s either offensively dull or painfully histrionic. The interesting (the melodies on “There Was a Flood,” the aforementioned blasts on the title track, the breakdown at the end of “Germany”) is swallowed up, usually in the span of one song and often in the course of one verse, by the sinfully boring plod of arena metalcore beats and riffs.

Declaration isn’t the WORST thing in the world: “There Was a Flood” and “Sister Charlatan” have really effective uses of keyboard, and the clean vocals, though occasionally veering into grating screamo territory, are generally lower register crooning, showing that Brandan Schiepatti knows his vocal limitations and works within them, something very few in metal and popular music in general do. But there are too many sins on Declaration that cannot be forgiven (The breakdowns are shitty! How can you be a metalcore band in 2008 with shitty fucking breakdowns? That’s like Steven Segal and Dakota Fanning making a buddy picture together with little-to-no ass kicking.) in order to make Bleeding Through a band worth your time, money, or attention. A band with this much sloppy, bloated ambition that try to pull off an album like this as artlessly as they do are by no means what the genre, nor metal as a whole, needs. Lacking the subtlety and intricacy of their superior peers, this music is tailor made for overblown package tours and the closing slot at shitty metal fests, practically instantly lending itself to being bounced off the walls of midsized theatres with terrible sound, growing fainter as you close out your bar tab and start your way home to listen to something good to get the taste of this middling junk out of your mouth.

(2 out of 5 horns)

-SO