REVIEW: Bleed From Within - Zenith

After three years, the Scottish metal powerhouse Bleed From Within are back with quite possibly their strongest outing to date. After 20 years, evolving from deathcore to melodic metal to metalcore, this band have reached their Zenith, the self-proclaimed peak of their career. This album is grand, its bold and it’s a real statement to show off the talent of these Glasgow natives.

Off the back of tours with genre giants such as Slipknot and The Ghost Inside, Bleed From Within are absolutely on a warpath for metal domination and this album absolutely reflects that – Zenith opens on ‘Violent Nature’, and right off the bat the album tears into you. Crafted with heavy synths, disgustingly heavy riffs, impressive screams and drums that make you feel sorry for kit being played; this song is an absolute slap to the face. It sucks you in, dominates your attention and drags everything you've got into focus on this band. We here at Rage think there’s a real fine art to making an opening track, and Bleed From Within have absolutely nailed it here – it's epic, it's fierce and is the perfect foreshadowing for the absolute joyride of an album you’re about to endure.

It doesn’t stop there though, as immediately afterwards is the incredibly well received hit single ‘In The Place Of Your Halo’. With one of the catchiest choruses the band have ever curated, it makes for some incredible chanting material while moshing, and it definitely felt like that when they debuted the song on tour with Slipknot back in December; fans, first time listeners all, smashed bodies together for this grandiose track that also incorporates bagpipes for some added heritage and atmosphere to incredible effect.

Not holding back, the band then throw us into the title track with ‘Zenith’ which to us sounded like a beautiful and brutal rallying call to their fans: it beckons, it demands and takes you into the dark world of Bleed From Within, with guitarist Steven Jones blessing our ears with his majestic and angelic vocals to juxtapose vocalist Scott Kennedy’s rough and punchy unclean vocals; not only those two, but the song features many choral voices to add to its presence.

Bleed From Within set the themes up for the album in these songs with more rallying cries on ‘God Complex’ with more catchy and chanty choruses, before bringing it down with the extremely melodic but just as heavy ‘A Hope in Hell’. Continuing on to the impressive ‘Dying Sun’, they tide the album over excellently before arriving at the entirely genius ‘Immortal Desire’, featuring one of the bands heroes in Brann Dailor of Mastodon. This song is so utterly technically impressive, from the use of a choir as an instrument to intro the song, to the simply sublime vocals all round, this is definitely one to keep an eye on.

The band then dive into their roots, with the heaviest songs of the album following this, all the while still incorporating plenty of synth and angelic vocals. This carries on all the way up to the epic final track ‘Edge Of Infinity’, as they deiver their most emotionally charged song to complete this saga of an album; bringing in slow piano, acoustic, more atmospheric synth and the two vocalists giving every last modicum of energy to making this track as passionate as possible. Zenith finishes in a magnificently beautiful way, with the screams of Scott Kennedy slowly fading away as we are left with a slow and beautiful piano melody, giving a bittersweet end to one of the best metalcore albums we’ve heard in a long time…

Score: 9/10

Zenith will be released on April 4th 2025 via Nuclear Blast Records.

Words: Ben Blissett

Photo: Tom Armstrong