#who arguably have a more solid discography than any of those bands. depends on how you feel abt danger days.

[anewbrainjughead]

listening to folie à deux and once again baffled at why panic! was the third member of the emo trinity back in the day. bc when you actually compare their discography to mcr & fob it's just fucking embarrassing for them. the ironclad grip brendon urie had on ryan ross's coattails and the places it got him........

[1-dollar-cd-sale-reviews]

The Bleeders - As Sweet As Sin (2006)

EDIT: At the time of this review, I believed that this was the first album in the Bleeders’ discography. I was wrong.

My mistake comes from a quick scan of a legitimate-looking Wikipedia page, and a careless glance at a Discogs page for another band called The Bleeders. There are two self-titled albums, one in 2005 and another in 2007 - this album is in the middle, in 2006. Because of my negligence, I’ve just reviewed the band’s first full-length release as their second full-length release, and vice versa.

I regret my decision terribly, and I’ve chosen to correct my most egregious errors. The only edits involve my age circa 2006, correcting an awkward turn of phrase, listing that the Bleeders album I’ll be reviewing after this one is their first self-titled album, and I’ve corrected the year of publication as being 2006 rather than 2005.

This is the first CD I picked out of this lot. The name of the band, and the way it was stylised on the spine of the CD case, were what drew my eye - and the kick-ass cover art is what made me keep it. I have never heard of this band before today, and when I saw the cover art I was expecting something metal.

You’d expect something heavy and edgy from that cover art, and when you first play the album that’s kind of what you get - just in a kind of muddy and derivative way. I dunno - honestly, as far as I know, this band used some of the themes and vocal imagery better than other artists of the time, or before edgy teen bands drove them into the ground. I would have been ten or eleven when this album came out, and I didn’t have a musical identity back then aside from “““Classic Rock”““ - I can’t say too much about how bland and uninspired I found the subject matter, I guess, but I will say that some of the songs brought back vague American Idiot-era Green Day vibes. It’s probably just the trappings of the era, or a bit of direct influence maybe, considering how American Idiot came out in 2004. I’m not a music historian or whatever, I don’t know. Just thought it was worth mentioning.

I’ve described the music on this album as sounding a bit muddy and - to my uninformed ears - derivative, and that holds true for the first four tracks of the album. The Kill and Secrets both had riffs that were boring and seem to exist to fill in time, and the vocals basically put me to sleep - I wasn’t hot on the subject matter or the sound of the singer’s voice. I don’t even remember the next two tracks, they basically went in one ear and out the other.

Wild at Heart, however, was actually pretty servicable. The riff brought me back to the album slightly, and while I still disliked the singer (god bless his heart, he’s trying), this song left me in a better mood. That might have set the groundwork for Nightmares, the first song that I actually kind of liked. The chorus sucked, but the music behind the track was pretty solid. This is what made me want to talk about the album - aside from shitting on the songs I disliked, I wanted to mention these little almost-diamonds in the rough that kept me invested in the whole package.

I could go on down the track listing, but really, there are two types of songs on this album - the ones I liked, and the ones I didn’t. They fit into these categories in fairly similar ways, so I’ll talk about them as a whole.

The songs I kind-of-liked were Wild at Heart, Nightmares, S.O.S, Silhouettes, It’s Black II, Eating Up Your Mind and A Bleeding Heart. The ones I didn’t like were The Kill, Secrets, Holding On, Out of Time, Night Sky, Bridges Burning and Femme Fetale. It’s an even 50/50 split of the track listing

I’ve listed the songs I’ve liked for two reasons. The first reason I might have enjoyed them is because they had an entertaining riff, or the music behind it was pretty good all things considered, or I might have even grown to like the lyrics. The second reason is that it might have had a cool fake-out, or a quick little guitar thing, that caught my attention. Not all of the songs in this section were particularly good, but if it sparked a positive reaction from me, I wrote it down as a good track.

The songs I didn’t like were listed for the opposite reasons. The music was mediocre and bland, there’s no variation in the already monotonous and mediocre instrumental track, and the singer’s vocals and the lyrical content were both uninspired or didn’t sound good to me. I fucking forgot how two of these songs even went, right after they finished playing - they were just gone from my head, I didn’t absorb a single modicum of information from them. They’re like musical ghosts.

Special mention goes to the two songs with featured artists on them - S.O.S, which features a guy named Danny Diablo, and Femme Fetale, which features an artist named Roxy. I listed S.O.S as a good track because the 15 seconds of Danny Diablo’s voice on it were the best 15 seconds of the album for me. I didn’t like the music or the feel of the song, but this guy’s very brief verse in this very brief song (1:13)? Best part of the album. Roxy’s feature, however, was sloppy, a bit out of time (which I think was an intended stylistic choice, which I still dislike regardless of the context) and arguably less enjoyable than the main vocalist’s voice. Please note, I already dislike the main vocalist’s voice a significant amount. It’s pretty funny how even the featured artists have split me, I’m that divided on this album.

My main issue with this album is that I simply didn’t enjoy the lead vocalist’s voice. I didn’t feel any energy from him for the entire album, it seemed to hover around the same level of enthusiasm and energy the whole time (which wasn’t much to begin with), and when he’d do a drop, it sounded like his voice had actually been dropped on the floor like a soggy sack of potatoes. The instrumental track could be bland and completely forgettable, but there was the occasional drop or riff that had me thinking “Alright, I could listen to more of this” - but I never once thought the same thing about the vocals. The song “Silhouettes” was the most striking example of this happening, with me really liking the music but being completely bored and turned off by the singer’s voice.

There were only two things that “got” me regarding the vocals - I think he dropped the n-word in the song “It’s Black II”, and his lead vocals on the chorus of the final track on the album were the only set of vocals that sounded alive during the entire thing. Those were the only vocal surprises from this guy, and one of them was more of a shock-value thing rather than actually enjoying what he had done.

To sum it all up - As Sweet as Sin came across as a fairly generic mid-2000′s edgy rock record, even during the best parts. The best parts of the album were usually marred by one of the worst aspects, with the best feature on the whole thing being relegated to the shortest song on the album or the best riff being hidden behind some pretty standard vocals. I was hoping for something, anything, that would blow my tits off - a shriek, an extended instrumental, whatever. And it never came. The closest there was were a couple of cool little fake-outs or little guitar shake-ups that woke me up and got me to pay attention, and even the pretty decent final song was just kind of uniform and there.

I recommend listening to Nightmares, Silhouettes and A Bleeding Heart for the best tracks (in my opinion), and The Kill, Femme Fetale and Secrets for songs that sum up what I don’t like about the album. 

You can buy the album online for anywhere between $3 used, or $11 - $41 dollars new, depending on where you look. I saw it on Amazon, eBay and Discogs, and the entire album is also on Youtube for free - most likely uploaded by a fan of the band. Or you could find it during your local multimedia store’s $1 CD sale, like I did.

I mean no ill will towards The Bleeders or their fans. I picked the album randomly, I liked what I liked and disliked what I disliked based solely on my first impression of the band and their songs - if I had really hated the band, I would have stopped at the fourth track and claimed the whole album was the same bland, forgettable trash. I respect those who enjoy The Bleeders and their music, including the tracks I personally disliked, and I wish the band continued success. I will be reviewing their (first) self-titled album later on (because I bought it in the same sale as this one), and maybe their music will have grown on me - I doubt it, but let’s hope.