EP REVIEW: Bleeding Fiction II: Child Of Tomorrow – She Said Destroy

What do double-decker buses and post-rock bands have in common? You can wait what feels like decades for one, and suddenly two arrive at the same time. Norway’s SHE SAID DESTROY awoke from a nine-year slumber with last year’s Succession, and like our local rides to work, are following it up with Bleeding Fiction II: Child of Tomorrow, a sprawling 14-minute, one-track sequel to 2012’s equally mammoth 26-minute Bleeding Fiction EP.

Whereas last year’s Succession sunk its teeth into blackened sludge, hardcore and doom across nine separate tracks in comparison to Bleeding Fiction’s sweeping post-rock serenade, Bleeding Fiction II sees SHE SAID DESTROY combine the two like peanut butter and jelly to create a heavenly sandwich of sounds. 

Cold synths echo out like tides settling into the sides of seashores, saxophone-style sounds sending shivers down your spine as the warmth of the rising sun guides you. These might only be the opening moments of Bleeding Fiction II, yet they perfectly capture the sensory experience the record takes you on. Whether it’s underplaying your senses as it quietly guides you through its undercurrent, or the overload of noise that follows mere moments later as the industrious, metallic crunch of guitars and sparse stabs of drum fills invade your peaceful world, it’s masterfully executed.

There were moments during Bleeding Fiction’s sprawling slide into post-rock oblivion that felt so perfectly polished, so delicately delivered, that it led to you struggling through the sludge. With a decade to deliberate, SHE SAID DESTROY have no qualms in letting chaos reign on Bleeding Fiction II; clean harmonies collide in the sky with guttural growls, jangly math-rock riffs melt into your mind whilst screams scatter-blast across your mind like neurons firing off in your brain. And it’s all the better for it. There’s life being breathed into every inch of this 14-minute world, ready and waiting for you to paint. 

Post-rock has always had a problematic relationship with pacing, but there’s no such problem here. Bleeding Fiction II feels its way through the dark into the dawn, letting every instrument have its individual place within their collective space. There’s a moment late on when angelic female harmonies hide out in the undercurrent of the mix, making way for the stretching, sensational, saddening screams before everything you’ve ever heard before suddenly erupts at once like Mount Vesuvius serving a death sentence to the Gulf of Naples. It’s a stroke of pacing genius that fully immerses you into the magic.

Where SHE SAID DESTROY struggle on Bleeding Fiction is in its grand finale. Much like the ending of Mass Effect 3, you’re left reeling over the anti-climatic climax; there’s no big bang, no dramatic curtain-closer, it just cuts out to mere seconds of static before plunging you into nothingness. Whilst it feels like a full-stop for the Bleeding Fiction series, it feels like a slap in the face for the 42 minutes you’ve invested in listening to the two parts back-to-back. 

SHE SAID DESTROY might not be doing the rounds in post-rock’s coffee shop of favourites, but if Bleeding Fiction II and Succession before it are anything to go by, it won’t be long until they’re on the specials menu.

Rating: 9/10

Bleeding Fiction II: Child Of Tomorrow is set for release on November 25th via Mas-Kina Productions.

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