Album Review: Internal Bleeding - Settle All Scores
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
The humble palm mute. Backbone of so much within metal from the defiant salvos of thrash to deathcore's library of unctuous, face-wrinkling breakdowns. But few genres venerate the palm mute with quite the emphasis of slam death. The genre is built around the palm mute, it’s entire architecture mortared brick by brick around a rigid frame of staccato punishment that obliterates brain cells about as thoroughly as does a double-tap from a cannon. And while there have been pretenders, by the armada, to the throne, one band that inarguably sit, haughty and insouciant at the squabbling of the slam underlings that bicker at their ankles, within the royal bloodline of slam are New York's own sons Internal Bleeding.
Any of their releases are as much albums as they are decrees, presented as enlightenment for the wayward that no, THIS is how the job is to be done. I know not whether the current field of slam has invoked their ire or not, but I suppose it must have done, for here we are at the cusp of another declaration from on high. The knuckles are cracked, the neck rolled, and the game set for another lesson in slam supremacy. We have fallen amiss of the true path, and now Internal Bleeding have returned to set us right once more. How, then, does the instruction proceed?
It’s immediately apparent upon pressing “play” that the band considered leaving you with a few teeth left, but ultimately decided “fuck that”. This is essentially the auditory equivalent of jumping on a rake. There are eight songs here, and a much more illustrative review than anything I’m likely to manage with words alone would simply be smashing a shovel into your mouth about that many times. The album is truly, madly, deeply pissed off and it’s most thoroughly displeased moments – the ferocious slow-motion curb stomp of 1:15 in “Crown of Insignificance” for example – feel as though it has just started literally raining men and all of them want to kick your ass. This is, to be clear, more of the same work that has characterised their discography for decades now; perhaps an accounting for the rancour might be that they have had to bestow this tutelage so many times before and we have exasperatingly refused to learn. Additionally, through the course of my life I have eaten roughly twelve million hot dogs; they remain as delicious now as they always have been, and I have yet to find myself bemoaning the lack of innovation or development in hot dog manufacture. Voracious Contempt (their debut) came out swinging in 1995, and their current manifestations are exactly as exhilarating as they were 30 years ago.
Some Slam death bands have travelled that far down the sewer that the roots of the style become obscured; not so with Internal Bleeding. In substantial part, this album IS a hardcore release, the sort that morphs a pit into a blender of launched fists and feet as though someone dropped a strobelight into a hall full of epileptic karate enthusiasts.
The tempo drops as the title track hammers into it’s chorus like a train pulverising itself against a mountain – the second they play this live you’ll see more flying limbs than a centipede on a landmine. But it’s not as though slams are the only implement with which Internal Bleeding can dispense contusions. They’ve a melodious sensibility that you don’t always see this far to the extreme of the musical spectrum. Stalwart yet surly riffs of the kind that Integrity have made a career of grace the tail end of “Enforced Compliance” and beginning of “Deliberate Desecration”, lest the otherwise perpetual cudgeling introduce a mote of monotony if left unattended. And the production of it too, the diabolical heaviness of it all as groove after groove smacks in body blows that corrugate your sternum, is – to use a word as overdone as it is appropriate – crushing. They have, through dark means that before Christ I’ll swear can only have been malicious, somehow taken the sound of Steel toe caps to the ribs and turned it into a distortion pedal. You pair that with a snare that pops out like a stubborn erection and you have a level of groove-based auditory trauma matched or excelled only by the most elite tier of active slam bands.
Really, there is only one thing that I have an unreserved distaste for, and it is, in fairness, not the most consequential of quibbles either. But the cover art. I’ll not pretend to be a dab enough hand at the pen and inks to surpass it, but someone else out there definitely could, and so the question must be asked: why the comic book fuck did they have to go for this one? It’s cartoonish, generic, anatomically suspect, somehow both too colourful and not colourful enough (enough to get the splatter vibe going, not enough to seal the deal), and what’s more it adds to a distinct trend that seems to plague Internal Bleeding from their inception onwards – terrible artwork. Voracious Contempt’s art is iconic but gets worse the longer it’s looked at (either the perspective is botched or that gun is just fucking ENORMOUS), Extinction of Benevolence goes for an awkward pictorial collage route, Driven to Conquer does not seem to understand how Bold Font works and needs the original logo desperately to avoid looking like a jingoist powerpoint presentation, Onward to Mecca is a photo of what Alex Jones thinks he looks like, Imperium has the most boring colour scheme known to man atop a blurred mess of...stuff, Corrupting Influence features a Robocop fetishist mid-orgasm, and now...there’s this. What I’m trying to say here, is that every single Internal Bleeding album competes for the title of Stevie Wonder’s favourite slam record.
But the fact that the album would be more enjoyable if I was blind does nothing to defeat the broader point that Internal Bleeding have once more demonstrated why the honour of slam sovereign belongs to them alone. The English have long been lampooned (unfairly I might add) for the quality of our dentistry. Internal Bleeding have graciously decided to solve the malady simply by kicking our jaws in two. Buy this album. With your eyes closed. But buy it nonetheless.
That’s a lot of adjectives! Thanks for the review. Even tho you have to listen to it with your eyes closed hahhaha.
My pleasure. It’s good to have Internal Bleeding back once more.