Bleed From Within's latest album, 2020's Fracture, stands up as one of the greatest metalcore albums in recent memory.
Both meticulously crafted and brutally delivered, the LP strikes a perfect balance between the oh-so-heavy breakdowns fans of the genre perennially crave, and more feel-driven melodic sections, which occasionally even venture into the acoustic realm. It's the regular juxtaposition of these two somewhat opposing musical styles that ensures the continued impact of each.
While some tracks are unrelenting in their ferocity – take the opener, The End of All We Know, and third track Into Nothing – others, like sixth track Night Crossing, are a rollercoaster in musical composition.
From its massive, reverb-soaked opening lick and subsequent demolishing riff to the emotive slide-y lead guitar passage around the three-minute mark, Night Crossing sees guitarists Craig "Goonzi" Gowans and Steven Jones utilize everything in their six-string arsenal. It even features a dizzying guitar solo from Trivium leader Matt Heafy.
Gowans and Jones showcase the track in full in this new playthrough, premiered exclusively on Guitar World.
Jones tackles Heafy's solo, though as Gowans explains, the Trivium man “couldn't remember what he played”, and adds, “learning it by ear was a right good laugh”.
Gear-wise, Gowans plays a Carillion Polaris 6, while Jones opts for a Caparison Horus. Both run through Neural DSP's Archetype: Gojira plugin, which the company describes as the “heaviest plugin in the universe”.
“This song was a marriage between the lead at the beginning, which I had in the bank for a while, and the main riff which Steven had for a completely different song, but the tempo and key fitted perfectly so we combined,” says Gowans.
In other Bleed From Within news, the band recently released a new single, I Am Damnation. It arrives ahead of their upcoming sixth album, which is due in 2022.
- Bleed From Within's latest album, Fracture, is out now via Century Media Records.
