I wouldn’t call the eighth studio album of the Dutch, highly anticipated. Having released four songs as a single and one on an E.P., the last period, I had a pretty good taste of what “Bleed Out” would be like. Within Temptation had warned us of what was to come with “Bleed Out”, “Ritual”, “The Purge”, “Don’t Pray For Me” and “Entertain You”. And two of the above had been performed live on last year’s tour. I was of course waiting to listen to it in its entirety and with great satisfaction from the very beginning, since the samples were extremely positive and this satisfaction became even greater when I found out that the rest of the songs were equally good and I had in my hands an album with eleven excellent and very close together songs. For some reason, listening to them all together in order made them sound even better.
“Resist” had disappointed me, I found it quite uninspired with 2-3 exceptions. In “Bleed Out”, although the production is in the same style, the compositions are much better in every aspect. They are quite aggressive, groovy, the melodies are excellent, and almost all of the tracks have the characteristic of a hit. I consider “The Purge” the highlight of the album and one that will remain a classic, among so many others, like “We Go To War”, “Don’t Pray For Me” and more. Such is the “construction” of “Bleed Out” that it allows the listener to have their own favorite songs, more so than most albums released every day.
In their new album, Within Temptation don’t break the habit of guesting from “foreign” fields. This time the German metalcores Annisokay, accompany the band on “Shed My Skin” and the result is really very good. And closing the album with “Entairtain You”, leaves a feeling of victory, in response to “We Go To War”, which opens it.
The main reason I loved “Bleed Out” is that it calmed me down as to the continuation of the band’s progression, as this new sound that started with “Resist” had me feeling like I was being girded by snakes. It’s definitely one of the best releases of the year and will definitely be high on the playlist that the editor-in-chief will ask me for somewhere towards the end of December.
