Bleed Into One Birth.Struggle.Death.

Bleed Into One's press release openly states the band's opinion that "hardcore is the wrong place for innovation." This group of German hardcore devotees is proud to carry on the long tradition of hardcore in a nearly mindless fashion, and they generally achieve just that. The base sound and song style is old school New York hardcore in the vein of Judge or the Cro-Mags, but Bleed Into One insert a handful of breakdowns and metallic riffs a la Hatebreed and I'm pretty sure you get the idea. As the band has already stated, there is absolutely nothing new here, but there's also very little to get excited about in general. It's not entirely uncommon for a hardcore band to be relatively derivative, but usually you get good songs or powerful lyrics or a certain indescribable something that makes them stand out from their peers. Bleed Into One do a really good job of blending in with all the NYHC-inspired mosh-core bands out right now without even creating their own personal style of it. I guess you could say that the German accent does a little to help distinguish Bleed Into One from the rest of the pack, but if that's all you've got going for you, there's something seriously wrong. There are a handful of decent tracks, like "Build The Sky," but the band wasn't lying when they stated that there is absolutely nothing at all innovative about any of this. There are undoubtedly certain hardcore fans out there that will appreciate the straightforwardness of what Bleed Into One do, but I'm just not one of them. The production is decent and the artwork is handled by hardcore icon Linas Garsys. It's definitely not one of his finer moments, but it's an appropriate finishing touch to an equally uninspired record. Bottom Line: I suppose part of me appreciates that a band admits they're not doing anything different or interesting, but the music fan in me has to ask "Why bother" Why even bother making music if you don't care enough to try something even a little bit untested or different Regardless of what these guys think, hardcore has changed and evolved over the last twenty years and it's been thanks to the people who cared about hardcore the most: those who refused to let it stagnate.