The title
Bleed is probably referring to what will happen to your ears upon listening to this
Speedealer album. This is, after all, a blistering mix of speed metal and post-grunge grit, like
Nirvana or
Soundgarden on some serious uppers. Throughout, the record is frenetic and schizophrenic -- like it doesn't know whether it's descended from
Metallica,
Flipper, or
Judas Priest. But the group plays this insanity with such a sleazy and rambunctious confidence (it has the nerve to call a song "Rock and Roll"!) that you have to take its word on it. From the violent and raucous "Choked" (
Black Flag meets
Motörhead) to the monolithic and oddly funky "The Inventor of Evil," this is a big, nasty, coke-fueled doom fest. It would be in the same genre as self-proclaimed robo-rockers
the Queens of the Stone Age, except that
Speedealer remove anything remotely "robo" from their tweaker rants in exchange for a visceral and volatile mess. By the end of this record,
Speedealer have no contemporaries. REO Speedealer was such a better name, though. ~ Charles Spano