Album: Bleeder
Year: 2015
Rating: 86/100
As musicians, Stephen Brodsky and Ben Koller both have reputations that precede them when it comes to quality. Cave In's Brodsky also had a spell in Converge as their bass player, while Converge drummer Ben Koller also had a temporary spell pounding the skins in Cave In! As a result, when I had heard that the two of them had teamed up again, I was hugely interested to see what results it would yield.
Opening track "Bridgeburner" opens with a wall of feedback and bass noise before kicking in at a rate of knots. Brodsky excels as the sole guitarist here, hammering out some vicious licks and chops which wouldn't have been out of place in his early Cave In days. Koller handles the songs' numerous time shifts with ease, giving everything a slight Jesus Lizard-esque touch. Elsewhere, "Sweet Ivy" has an effect-laden intro that starts slowly but builds into the typical Mutoid Man attack, "Surveillance" and "Beast" are almost metallic in their assault, and almost as subtle as a brick to the face, while "1000 Mile Stare" allows Brodsky to change things up vocally, incorporating screamed vocals into the mix for the first time on the album, as he also does on the furiously intense "Deadlock". The title track is the only track on the album that clocks in at longer than four minutes, but even that roars into life before long.
"Bleeder" is suitably intense, as expected from men with such fantastic extreme music chops as Stephen Brodsky and Ben Koller. Not only that, both give the finest performances on record I've heard from them since their own respective zeniths with Cave In and Converge; "Until Your Heart Stops" and "Jane Doe" respectively. It holds up superbly as its own record, as opposed to a stopgap between the next Cave In and Converge albums, and that alone is why it deserves your attention.
Track list
- Bridgeburner
- Reptilian Soul
- Sweet Ivy
- 1000 Mile Stare
- Surveillance
- Beast
- Dead Dreams
- Soft Spot In My Skull
- Deadlock
- Bleeder
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