Bleeding Eyes - Golgatha

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BLEEDING EYES is a Sludge/Doom Metal band from Treviso, Veneto, Italy. They formed way back in 2002 and this is their fourth full-length album and first since ‘’Gammy’’ that was released in 2014. They are returning to their Italian roots and language for this very album departing from the half and half approach of the previous album.

It’s your usual run of the mill Sludge/Doom Metal album. It’s harsh and abrasive, you have the shouted vocals, heavily distorted guitars and drum with those sharply contrasting tones. It’s quite slow and you have that atmosphere that is thick and heavy. Everything is downtuned and the emphasis is on those thick breakdowns. The music isn’t overly bad, it’s just been done so many times that I forgot to count.

The vocals are just awful, they are very quiet and lack all the emotion and charm of various bands in the genre. It sounds like he is vocalizing in a different room with a thick wall between him and the recording equipment, at times, you can barely hear him screaming through the thick fog of the other band members. It really gets on the nerves of the listener pretty quickly. It’s aggressive to listen to and the vocalist just doesn’t fit with the mood of the whole album. It’s like apples and oranges at best.

Simone Tessier tries too hard and his overlaying screams just don’t get the effect he wants. Sometimes his voice is muffled and sometimes he is screaming like Max Cavalera on crack. Even though sometimes I feel the music is way too loud (or mixed poorly), the vocals just can’t save this album from mediocrity. His aggressive (again with that word) vocals tend to have a negative effect on me. The music is nothing to write home about but it’s standard Sludge/Doom Metal and still quite enjoyable even though not overly imaginative. Poor production and poor vocals really keeps this album at bay and this wasn’t an overly good album to start with.

Songwriting: 6
Musicianship: 6
Memorability: 6
Production: 6