Band:	Bloodsimple
Album:	Red Harvest
Style:	Alternative metal, Metalcore
Release date:	October 30, 2007
A review by:	jupitreas

01. Ride With Me
02. Red Harvest
03. Dark Helmet
04. Dead Man Walking
05. Out To Get You
06. Suck It Up
07. Death From Above
08. Whiskey Bent And Hellbound
09. Killing Time
10. Truth
11. Numina Ifuscata

Bloodsimple's Red Harvest is one of those albums that fail to impress for no apparent reason. Everything looks promising on paper - Tim Williams and co. stray further away from the debut's nu-metal leanings, offer jack-of-all-trades metal with rare feeling of cohesiveness, feature generally solid songwriting and yet still manage to bore the hell out of me. Ironically, it is this cohesiveness, which usually should be a huge trait that ends up harming this album.

Maybe some creative deconstruction can help me explain what I mean. The performances are all extremely good, with front-man and ex-Vision Of Disorder screamer Tim Williams being the centerpiece yet again, going fluently from one end of the scale to the other - both his screams and crooned clean vocals show impressive mastery. The band backing him up show a higher understanding of groove and finesse here than on A Cruel World and their take on all the approaches they chose to commit to is note-perfect. One needs look no further than "Ride With Me" to experience this pedigree - the song's evolution from being ominous, yet somewhat bluesy to foot-to-the-pedal alternative metal is basically perfect, following the rock music manual, if there was one, to the letter. The result is that the music sounds like the work of professionals who know their craft, but lack the youthful energy that this kind of music is supposed to be about. Yes, this is right, experience and professionalism, things most bands aspire to acquire, in this case become curses. Throughout Red Harvest, I cant help but wish the band would just let themselves go at points, take chances, hell - make mistakes.

Let me tell you, out of all the criticisms I can think of for a band performing rock music, this one is the most harmful. I hate to see clearly talented people make music that I can hum along to, or gently tap along to, at best. Isnt rock or metal music supposed to be about venting, screaming, expressiveness in all forms? At the same time, don't forget that this is also the most subjective criticism of all - You, my esteemed reader, could experience this album in a whole different way. Frankly, this band deserves at least that. I urge you to check out their MySpace page, for example, and decide for yourselves.