This Is Love, This Is Murderous

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Close your eyes as you listen to Bleeding Through's second album, 2004's This Is Love, This Is Murderous, and you'll hear vicious melodic death metal in the Killswitch Engage mode, but with even harsher croak-vocals backed by subtle synthesizer chords. Open them and you'll stare in confusion at the sight of a bunch of eyeliner loving Mike Ness disciples, whose choice of wardrobe would normally suggest some lame mutation of teen girl-friendly kiddie-punk. Well, as your granny used to say, "looks can be deceiving," and that certainly proves the case here as massive death metal blowouts like "Love Lost in a Hail of Gun Fire" and "Number Seven with a Bullet" start tearing through one's skull with incredible fury, velocity, and ever-shifting arrangements. Among the numerous highlights on hand, "City of the Condemned" and "Dead Like Me" could almost qualify as black metal, such is the speedy precision of the band's assault, and both the title track and "On Wings of Lead" (what, are these guys NRA members?) take confident shots (pun intended) at some In Flames-style harmonies. Alas, a good number of the album's remaining tracks lack that extra-imaginative, inspired songwriting touch to keep from namelessly melding into each other; but Bleeding Through's blindingly technical execution nevertheless provides a constant source of entertainment. And at least there's no questioning the band's complete commitment to its mission, meaning there's tons of potential and room to grow here.