ALBUM REVIEW: Bleed Yourself – Mouth For War

Five seconds – that’s all the warning you get from MOUTH FOR WAR before they launch the all out assault that is their sophomore full-length Bleed Yourself. A little buzz, a muffled sample and a few snare hits and then into a violent chugging groove – if you didn’t know what the Colorado Springs hardcore outfit were about before you do now, and there’s about 35 more minutes where that came from. Bleed Yourself may not do much to reinvent the wheel, but when you can make it spin as smoothly as this why would you need to?

For those unfamiliar with them, MOUTH FOR WAR probably line up most comfortably next to the likes of JESUS PIECE and CHAMBER to name a couple of bands who’ve released records of a similar punishing calibre this year. Bleed Yourself bludgeons its way through 13 tracks of mosh fuel with minimal exception, every riff, groove and breakdown landing with all the force of a steamroller dropped out of an aeroplane and captured in crisp high definition by producer Pete Grossmann. Vocalist Trae Roberts is an instrument of blunt force aggression even among all the others, his pissed off guttural style perhaps not hugely unique but no less effective in making the album feel that much more in your face and intimidating.

Even with little in the way of variation, the length of Bleed Yourself and the quality of the tracks contained within it ensures that it never really loses that same arresting force with which it grabs listeners from the outset. Sixth track In Lieu Of Flowers is a moody and well-timed interlude just inside the halfway mark which sets up The Devil which follows to hit that much harder, while recent single Saturate Me lurches out of a twisted little sample to knock the wind out of you all over again. Both these tracks and a few others have moments where MOUTH FOR WAR push things out to somewhere more atmospheric and expansive – not excessively, but just in a way that brings a little something extra to Bleed Yourself that stops it feeling completely one-note.

Really though, MOUTH FOR WAR know what they’re good at and stick to it. They may add a cool wah guitar part or a sample or even a rhythmic break here or there, but Bleed Yourself is remembered most of all as a series of body blows delivered to the listener with the same force from start to finish. Some of the hardest of these are even saved for the home straight, with eleventh track Shattered Self and particularly the album’s closing titular effort doing all in their considerable power to ridicule any suggestion that the band might coast to finish.

That’s not easy by the way; 35 minutes might not be the most ridiculous ask of a listener but there are plenty of bands who play a similar style of hardcore to MOUTH FOR WAR who would definitely start to lose their audience around the half-hour mark. Maybe they’re just meaner or angrier or simply better than some of the others, but whatever it is it just works and it means that Bleed Yourself has everything it needs to hold its own even in a scene as crowded with quality as that of modern metallic hardcore.

Rating: 8/10

Bleed Yourself is set for release on October 27th via MNRK Heavy.

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