British death metal act
Trigger the Bloodshed move from Metal Blade to Candlelight for this, their third album. Musically, though, they haven't shifted an inch. Their trad-extreme sound owes a lot to pretty much every one of their contemporaries -- downtuned guitars, blasting drums, guttural vocals. They've got a little bit of
Napalm Death's relentlessness, but groove grabbed from
Lamb of God and
the Black Dahlia Murder in equal measure. The occasional squiggly guitar solo livens up songs that would otherwise be marathons of mechanistic grinding. The album's biggest flaw is its opening track, which is more than five minutes long, a major mistake when you're trying to seem intense. Over that long a haul, the listener's energy inevitably flags, even if (thanks to Pro Tools) the band's never does. Shorter songs, like the 3:30 "Hollow Prophecy" and the 2:30 album closer, "Whited Sepulcher," show the band in a much better light. This isn't a bad record, but
Trigger the Bloodshed don't demonstrate enough individuality to make it a must-purchase unless one is determined to own every record released by a band from Bristol, England.