Of the significant steps that RØRY has taken over the last couple of years, every one has been wholeheartedly deserved. It doesn’t hurt that she’s incredibly easy to root for, with a good-natured and compassionate persona in both her music and extracurricular podcast work. Predominantly, though, it’s her rags-to-riches rise and the gratitude that’s been attributed to it that’s bolstered RØRY’s scene presence. It’s the reality of an older female artist looking to make it in an industry where that’s seen as an unbreakable barrier to contend with. When it is broken, the effects are enormous.
As a result, RØRY’s artistic voice has routinely felt tangible and believable in circles where that’s never a guarantee. She’s very much an anomaly within her alt-pop / pop-metal ranks, for entirely positive reasons. For one, nothing about her precludes taking an opportunity to grow. BLOODLETTING is very much a consequence of that, trending much heavier than last year’s RESTORATION, and with real aplomb. RØRY herself, too, has strived to expand her performance strength and repertoire (inspired to take vocal lessons by yours truly, apparently). Even on pure principle alone, BLOODLETTING just feels like another step forward.
It’s definitely still recognisable as a follow-up to RESTORATION, though, even with its multiple tweaks. Both are slick, forward modern rock albums, albeit now with further emphasis on barrelling through scene traps than simply avoiding them. For what’s ostensibly RØRY’s metal album, that’s still a very good outcome. Here, the monochrome slabs of alt-metal that serve as the bane of a (discerning) modern heavy fan’s existence actually have weight and power to them. It’s a wake-up slap when songs like DEGRADATION and MORTAL not only crank their mid-tempo choruses into monoliths that seldom feel this big, but actually carry a knowledge of heaviness within them. You don’t need songs like this to be complex odysseys; the power just has to match the posture. On what’s basically her first go, RØRY’s nailed that.
The fact that you can feel the effort that’s gone into this is what impresses the most. There’s never the impression of the mechanised alt-metal production line depositing its next batch, such is the clear importance of humanity to RØRY as a performer. She’s not the most flawless screamer in the world, but the raggedness and stretched-to-its-limit exertion are a great fit for the kind of artist she is. There’s a soul within these songs that your typical pop-metal robots will rarely portray with many returns. Get to the interlude [the death of a people pleaser]—a harrowing, mutilated cry of self-breakage with not a falsified inkling in sight—and it’s borderline foreign on an album of this kind.
It’s a testament to how much of BLOODLETTING is not just lip service to its titular concept. It does feel like a purge, exorcising the destruction and negativity of past lives, assessing that which came before, and mapping out what’s next. What’s nice is how, even in a towering colossus of thematic self-exploration, there’s also a distinctly human touch. RØRY’s future isn’t full of earth-shattering desires—she wants to reconnect with her home; she wants to see others live and survive; she herself wants to live. It’s another example of how beneficial the perspective of age is, particularly aged tanned by experience. a cure for cancer really leaps out in that regard, with a more earnest presentation and a tone that’s very pastoral, or even maternal. On the opposite end, there’s KIDS THESE DAYS, a send-up of the hateful, demeaning individuals of RØRY’s own generation and above, though it’s hard to get purchase on the subtext when the rhetoric isn’t that much more heightened or parodical than what these people tend to use. In some case, it might even be more tame.
There are some other gripes to be had, too. The rapping on SWALLOW is a bit iffy, and [do you want to live?] is the kind of maudlin closer that makes your teeth feel furry, no matter how ultimately sweet and well-meaning it is. Other than those, though, BLOODLETTING is remarkably strong. For such an unabashed reinvention, RØRY pulls it off with deftness and confidence, affixed to a gumption that placed her in great standing to begin with. It’s the kind of album that, regardless of complaints, you’re happy to see turn out the way it does. Few artists in this space feel as worthy of something great as RØRY does, and BLOODLETTING is a perfect example of that in action.
For fans of: Bring Me The Horizon, PVRIS, Hot Milk
‘BLOODLETTING’ by RØRY is released on 11th September on SADCØRE Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
