ALBUM REVIEW: Where The Light Comes To Die – Bleeding Utopia

Through eight years of blood, sweat, and blast beats, Sweden’s BLEEDING UTOPIA have landed on a record that truly shows off their metal weaponry. While the past hasn’t necessarily been unkind to the quintet, who have built up a sturdy following over the years – new record Where Light Comes To Die appears to tie all their musical loose ends together. It all results in a death metal album that isn’t particularly different, but is delightfully vicious.

The opening whisper of Welcome To Hell before a cavalry of riffs on Ascendants Of Hate is about as metal as it gets. Seek Solace In Throes keeps the intensity at full throttle too – sounding like a blend of both AT THE GATES and tinges of SLAYER. BLEEDING UTOPIA manage to find their own zenith of being a throwback, as well as a modern death metal band with their own vibrancy. More than anything else though, the riffs of Andreas Moren and Chris Gustavsson are what takes Where The Light Comes To Die up an echelon or two. Tracks like Enhance My Wrath and Crown Of Horns would struggle to achieve the same level of potency without the duo’s cascading rhythms of splicing guitar lines. Without doubt the glue that holds the band together – Moren and Gustavsson are the archetypal death metal guitarists: proficient with a lust to cave your head in.

Where The Light Comes To Die isn’t an album that benefits from variety, risk, or reinvention. But what makes this record a success is the fact that BLEEDING UTOPIA have a level of technical savagery that is difficult to match. The unforgiving pace of Already Heard is enough to make your heart beat out of your chest, while the gurgles of vocalist David Ahlen on Ruthless Torment are legitimately harrowing. BLEEDING UTOPIA fit perfectly into the scene of death metal in the modern age – and they have enough weight behind them to throw fists with the likes BLACK DAHLIA MURDER. There are delicate cymbal strikes before breakdowns, side bending solos, and a hefty production to boot – this band have a future.

Album number three for BLEEDING UTOPIA certainly seems to be their best work to date. Always heavy, always punishing, and with a duo of superb guitarists to boot – this is a quintet that have taken the standard tropes of death metal, and excelled at them. Where The Light Comes To Die is heavy, nasty, and the band’s best work to date.

Rating: 8/10

Where Light Comes To Die is out now via Black Lion Records. 

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