[rayword45]

Day 20: Soulbleed by Soulbleed (Album Request: Sonicman68)

Soulbleed is a death/thrash metal band from Los Angeles. Looking at their Facebook, it seems they've done Soundgarden and Faith No More covers. That's either awesome or a bad sign. Their cover photo (presumably of the band) consists of 3 overweight men and one average-figured female. Let's see how this turns out.

This first track has a nice bassy intro. Then it turns to plain old thrash metal. The vocals are considerably more understandable then the average death metal band, there's a plus. Unlike the last few death metal bands I listened to, this guy doesn't have a particularly bad singing voice (although it doesn't to be 100% accurate at all times) based off the song Burning Slow. The guitar is decent (Slow Decay contains some decent solo work), but I've heard superior. Bed of Nails with its changing time signatures may be the most technically impressive song on the album. Or is it BPM changes? And a mini drum break! Either I haven't been paying attention or this song is vastly superior to the rest of the album.

So I've come to the conclusion that I haven't been paying attention. We have some pretty awesome drumming, fairly technical guitar work and a bass. My main problem? There's a pretty clear lack of creativity here. Every song on the album follows a pretty similar structure, and it could use some variety. Yes I realize I praised Amon Amarth despite the lack of creativity, bite me. A little variety would make this stand out. As it stands, it's pretty average thrash metal, though it's clear the instrumentalists have at least some semblance of talent.