Bleed

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.