Review by Lumina on February 21, 2026.

As Blood Runs Black have had quite the reputation over the years, most commonly referred to as just another Black Dahlia Murder clone. Personally, I don't find that to be all that accurate, or rather not accurate enough that it should be the only thing they should be known for. That aside, this band REALLY loves to be proud of this album, which, in their defense, they should be because it's amazing. But still, after now 11 years, or rather almost 5 years since the last new music showcase, shouldn't it be a priority to work on that rather than making the annual "hey remember us? our beloved record, whether another year older!" with little to no signs of life aside from that? Given this band's history of not being able to keep members for very long, part of me does understand why it's taking this long, but come on, at least finish the one showcased song and release it as a single or something already. Now that little rant aside, I suppose talking about the actual music next would be good.

As mentioned in the title, the Metal-Archives page and god knows where else, As Blood Runs Black play a style of melodic deathcore. I've personally not had that much experience with melodic deathcore on its own, since I usually stick to its bigger brother, melodic death metal. This isn't really done on purpose on my part; I just have issues with listening to new things, and most of what I've heard in the melodic department happens to be melodeath. This album in particular is quite the outlier in my library of music I regularly listen to, due to that, but for good reason.

If you're not one of those people that hates anything core-adjacent purely out of principle, there's really just everything here in this record you could ever need. There's even the obligatory short instrumental intro track that serves only one purpose, that is, showing you what's about to come. What exactly that would be is 9 songs full of 578 riffing, breakdowns, and overall just amazing music. That first part is technically a lie, since one of those 9 songs sitting in the middle of the album is a calm, purely clean tone playedas an interlude of sorts. I always like interludes, and this one just helps the pacing of the album a lot, so I thought that was worth mentioning.

Before anything else, I want to mention the mixing/production. I don't know exactly what it is about this record that just feels so good in that regard, but the bass tone probably contributes a lot. Having the bass actually be present in the mix is always amazing and will forever get a bonus point from me, regardless of whether the rest sucks. The bass player, Nick Stewart, mostly follows the guitars, but the occasional section where it sort of takes the lead can also be found here and there. The most well-known example of that would probably be the middle section of their most well-known song, "In Dying Days". That song, as bland as this opinion may be, is also my personal favorite, very much helped by one of my favorite playthrough videos ever, that being Nick, Erni,e and Sal playing that exact song on FPE-TV.

The drums are probably the least noteworthy part of this whole record, though this isn't really meant in a negative way. I personally also love how the entire drum kit sounds, especially the snare and kicks. Just adds to the overall rougher and rawer production of the whole record, and I find that quite neat. Guitar work here is probably my favorite part of all the instruments. It's just pure melodic riffing and good old drop-c chugs. The standard pull-off deathcore riff is also plentifully found here. Vocals are also quite neat, though that's all I can think of about those.

Overall, I see why people love (or hate, though I don't agree with most of the points people usually make why they feel about this record that way) this record. It was actually only a recent discovery of mine, or rather, it was in my backlog for a while, but I only listened to it recently, and it's already become one of my favorite records in metal. To end off, probably my longest review yet, I just want to say that I hope very much this band finally gets its shit together again and does not die off within the next few years without any new material.

Rating: 9.6 out of 10