Bloodlet

"Three Humid Nights in the Cypress Trees"
(Victory)  

After several years of inactivity, Bloodlet has finally unleashed its follow-up to the well-received The Seraphim Fall. On past releases, Bloodlet was one of the most evil-sounding hardcore bands around. A dark aura of anger, pain, misery, and even a generous touch of good ol' fashioned evil saturated previous albums with an almost enigmatic density, a grimly metallic heaviness that bludgeoned the skull without mercy. Sadly, that aura hasn't been maintained with the new release. Don't get me wrong, Three Humid Nights... is an acceptable return for Bloodlet, but it's definitely not a return-to-form. The album relies to a greater extent on mallcore jump rhythms and a few so-called "tribal" percussion patterns, the guitars lack that massively layered depth despite a fine Steve Albini production, and there is an increased use of clean vocal passages. While I respect the band's decision to update and develop its sound, for such gives me some assurance that this reformation was genuine and done for reasons beyond simply recapturing past glories, at some point during this process, that diabolically evil nature of Bloodlet's past music was lost. And the new developments fail to pick up that slack in any substantive way. In many respects, this album sounds like a metalcored version of Enemy of the Sun-era Neurosis, although lacking the multidimensionality of that band and that album. What we have instead is a fairly run-of-the-mill midpaced metalcore album possessed of a rather contrived nastiness delivered through the medium of well-composed but unremarkable songwriting tactics. Ironically, if I were to offer a critique of Bloodlet's past albums, it would be precisely the fact that the band's approach needed additional variation and innovation in order to give it a greater dynamic. While that was certainly accomplished with Three Humid Nights..., at the same time, I can't say that the means employed to that end are particularly enthralling. Thus Three Humid Nights... remains acceptable, above average, at times even good...but also disappointing primarily because Bloodlet has failed to capture that distinctive vibe which made its other albums special in their own right.

More from the Online Metal Journal