World Eating Anomaly

Sometimes you see a cool band name and think, oh man, I hope the music is as good as the name. Bleeding Heaven, if we can judge from this album alone, have earned the cool name--this is a very enjoyable album. On this, their first full length, they step into a crowded arena as a highly competent slam death metal band. Your enjoyment of this material will rely entirely on whether or not you enjoy slam riffs and pig squeals, but even for someone like me who's ambivalent on both, this one was worth listening to from beginning to end.

The album is mostly a melodic death metal album, with some more brutal moments highly reminiscent of Dying Fetus, particularly in the slam riffs, which are sparing but always sound cool, and the leads, which are surprisingly well-executed, tastefully melodic and with just enough grit and attitude to make you pay attention. This isn't thoughtless, straight-ahead plowing deathcore nonsense--this is a well-constructed, dynamic death metal album with choice elements of core and groove, played off with a sense of creativity and menace that sets it apart from the generic.

This is not a band that's content to repeat themselves from one song to the next. Some songs, like "Genetically Programmed Genocide," verge on death/doom at times, recalling the old school slowed-down death metal riffs of Obituary or Autopsy with more modern tones. Indeed, very little about this album sounds particularly modern, except the production and some aspects of the vocal performance. In general this seems like a band that respects their roots and knows where the music they're playing comes from. Moments of more overt melodicism, as in the opening moments of "Transmundane Obsession," serve as a welcome addition to this band's bag of tricks, a statement of sophistication within a package largely intent on simple brutality.

Overall, the thing holding this album back from a higher rating is the lack of novelty. They pull from a lot of different influences, but they still haven't made said influences their own. Nonetheless, if you like brutal death metal with melodic accents, Bleeding Heaven do a phenomenal job of executing the standard formula, throwing in some rather engaging surface details along the way. Once again, the question is: will you turn your nose up at slams and pig squeals?