Band:
Bloodletting
Hometown: Vermontville, MI
Genre: NuMetal
Ah,
NuMetal. All but abandoned by record labels and all but forgotten
by tastemakers. Upon whom may we place the laurel of blame for this
dead genre? Korn? Limp Bizkit? Does it even matter? With its skittering
double-bass drums, seven-string guitars and five-string bass, NuMetal
captured the limited imagination of suburban white youth and gave
voice to their dubious angst.
Brittany
dumped you? RRRAAAAAGGGHHH!!
Mom
took away your Playstation? EEEAAARRRRGH!!
Uncle
touched your bathroom thing? BINK DUBBADUBBA BINK BINK!!
Just
because the tide has long since gone out on NuMetal doesn’t
mean there aren’t plenty of small towns throughout the Midwest
still swimming in stagnant pools of rap/rock brine. The “Judgment
Night” soundtrack came out in 1993, but NuMetal took several
years to rumble its way into the suburbs of Mid-America on Ozzy
Osbourne’s arthritic shoulders. Like grunge before it, it
will take several more years to leave.
Case
in point: this week’s band in The Barrel.
Forum
member iaingillis had this to say:
What
makes it all worth it. I just love it when bands post pictures of
all the "hotties" that show up at their gigs, so that
when you make fun of them, they can retort with: "Oh yeah,
well, how many chicks show up at your gigs with your band name written
on their chests with a Sharpie? Well, how many, FAG?!" On a
side note, that kid in the red shirt looks like he has never been
in closer proximity to a girl in all his life, except for maybe
his older sister, but she was sleeping at the time, so he doesn't
count that.
Forum
bandit Voice of Reason says
Through
the e-smoke and e-mirrors, one might be fooled into believing that
you have stumbled upon a musical revolution. This, of course, is
assuming you're deaf, stoned, or one of the members' girlfriends.
The rest of us, of course, could smell the shite pile known as Bloodletting
from outer space.
It's
quite difficult to accurately describe this band without translations
of their own words.
"the
band felt relocation might lead to new inspiration, and help rekindle
a smoldering torch....after years of Michigan winters, the sunny
beaches of Florida led Baker, Floyd, and Pinckney to Jacksonville
in November of 2002....Early November 2003, Bloodletting moved their
newly remodeled and finely tuned band back to their hometowns in
Mid-Michigan."
They
moved to Florida, failed miserably, and returned home to the the
garage that spawned them.
Chris
has no formal training in vocals, but spent 3 years in the percussion
section of his high school band
As
a singer, Chris makes a mediocre 4th drummer.
They
break the boundaries of conventional black or speed metal, marching
forward with previously untapped creative avenues.
They
sound like every other bad metal band you've ever heard, but somehow
even worse.
Bloodletting
or phlebotomy, is a surgical practice dating back to antiquity.
“Bad blood”, thought to contain demons that wished ill
fortune on one’s life, was drained or leeched, in order to
remedy various sickness and disease.
A name that felt oh-so appropriate to a group of aspiring young
musicians, with a new found release for their personal demons and
bad blood.
They
are experts at leeching off friends and relatives.
But
enough about bad bio. Let's move onto the music, through which they
"start a new revolution".
The
Music
OK.
Let's not. About 20 seconds into Real Eyes ("Realize. Its a
play on words. Get it?" they say. ) I realized they sounded
like every other awful nu-metal shitbox band with delusions of grandeur.
I would have noticed sooner, but I was talking to someone for the
first 18 seconds.
OK,
how about image?
As
Crouching Angry Guy and Far Left Dazed Stare D00d display, there's
not enough farmer's tans in metal today. Middle Back Mongoloid Man
displays his i-need-to-shit-sooooo-bad look, while Upside Down Mop
Dufus tries soooo hard to look like a tough guy, but comes off with
all the manliness of a homosexual Peewee Herman. As a group, they
answer the age-old question "What has 8 legs and an IQ of 14?".
If
you love your metal without all that cumbersome talent, originality,
or emotion, then this is the band for you my friends. As their main
page announces, you only need to go as far as "Detriot"
for the a new "begining".
Payback
had this on his mind
A
tasteful blend of melodic harmonies combined with a modern hard-core
edge hardly describes Bloodletting.
again
with the "tasteful," and this time it hardly describes
the band.
as
in, "if you think you know 'tasteful,' you haven't heard Bloodletting!
these goofballs REDEFINE the definition of TASTEFUL! This is not
your father's tasteful!"
chopinzghost
stated
"follow me" is an absolutely
amazing conglomerate of metal clichés - like they took 100
famous metal tunes, cut 'em up, put 'em in a hat, and then randomly
assembled a song out of the pieces. there are chromatically meandering
power chords, cookie monster vocals, maiden-like chucking patterns
in figures of 3, and the ever-popular two beat dead stop that we
all know all too well. i even heard what sounded like a phrygian
nod to tool in there. and lets not forget to do some pseudo-timesig-shifting
synchopations on the bass and snare when we can. all in all, sounded
like they've got all the bases covered in terms of being as unoriginal
as can be imagined, and equally as uninspired.
Forum
tire slapguts said
We will
be preforming at the Emergenza Music Festival begining in March.
Ah,
the Emergenza. The Crown Royale of Battle of the Bands. They're
playing a crappy show, in a boring venue they could have booked
themselves, and it's COSTING them $70 to do it.
Philip
J Hurtchow echoed
Did
you guys know that bands are forced to pay $75 to play the exclusive
Emergenza festival? It's the tooth.
ermghoti
fired up the owning machine thusly
Once
in a great while, one encounters a band who grows beyond thier influences,
expands the horizons or thier genre, and stakes new ground in uncharted
musical territory.
Far
more often, you run into a quad of 19 year old dildos from the midwest
like Bloodletting.
One
could page through the collection of band photos, and giggle endlessly
at pasty 104 lb slackjaws trying thier damnedest to look like hardasses.
The list of inconsequential venues on the calender is somewhat amusing.
The meandering, gladhanding drivel that is the band's bio certainly
generates chuckles. Even the expert web design that causes the sparsely
site to display off the sides of a 1024x768 desktop hints at the
lack of effort contained within.
However,
the above comedic tidbits bow in redfaced shame before the lafftastic
main course: the music of Bedwetting.
Nothing
says "we are all pro" like a link to a free site for music
hosting. Once my eyes stopped rolling, I clicked the first offering.
I was treated to a cacophany of triggered, sleepy-left-foot double
bass drumming, downtuned guitars apparently played through budget
practice amps, and recorded directly to a soundcard, incomprehensible,
distorted cookie monster vocals (rendering the language advisory
pitifully unnecessary), and bass mixed far enough down so as to
not interfere with the other production flaws. In short, exactly
the half-assed approach that one would expect to find on a Soundclick
link. I certainly hope this crap was a home recording, because if
these boobs paid a studio to do this, they will be finding red spots
on thier toilet paper for years to come.
A tasteful blend of melodic harmonies combined with a modern
hard-core edge hardly describes Bloodletting
Not only hardly describes, but doesn't describe at all. "Taste,"
"melodic," and "harmonies" are each words that
no sane person would mention in a review of this numetal doodling,
unless preceded by the words "devoid of." Take a good,
long, hard look at the photo from the press kit. A kid with a string
mop on his head. Guy in front too ashamed to look at the camera.
The sound you imagine while laughing at this spectacle is exactly
what emits from your speakers when you play the MP3's.
In
short,in a genre that emphasizes rawness and power, Bedwetting conjure
all the metal energy that a Sigfreid and Roy honeymoon video could
offer.
Whatever
the level of pathetic is, that enduces even the purveyors of such
a feeble effort to admit thier failure, apparantly is exceded by
the delusions of adequacy suffered by... Bloodletting!
TammyHagar
opined the following
You
never make any sense, all you do is fuck with me
how can I deny a sense that feels so right
that when I purge and gluttonize
from the young and poor deprived
Its not that I’m a spiteful man
I can accept the blame
But all the tendencies that frighten you
could drive a man insane
That when he purges and gluttonizes from the young and poor deprived,
WHAT? I am sitting on the edge of my seat, feeling his words in
my SOUL and I need to know what happens! I wasn't even aware that
it was possible to gluttonize someone, so you can imagine how I
feel sitting here with my ass half off my chair, palms sweating,
tears of empathy streaming down my face, anticipation heavy on my
chest, waiting for the next lyrical gem to drop. Sure, maybe people
read these lyrics and think "Wow. That makes such little sense,
I feel a feel a little stupider now that I've read it." But
they don't get it, man. "Words" don't have to "make
sense" in "songwriting". All they have to do is convey
the True Emotional State of the author - and I think they've accomplished
that quite well. Add a shirtless guy, a spaghetti head, and a rabid
following of 7 husky ladies, and you've got gold, baby. Pure gold.
jackassrock
wraps things up with this
Chas plays a candy-apple red 5 string Vester bass, with D'Adario
xlt strings. A 15" Black Widow in a Peavy TNT. With no formal
training.
I am at a loss as to why the bass sounds like crap!
See
you next week when another band gets their turn in The Barrel. |
