Bring Me the Horizon: Review

Bring Me the Horizon - There Is a Hell Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is a Heaven Let's Keep It a Secret

Grade: 3.5 - Putting the emphasis on Symphonic
Label: Nuclear Blast
Genre: Symphonic Black Metal
Release Date: October 4, 2010
Site(s): http://www.myspace.com/bmth

High Points: Big musical improvement, LIGHTS providing guest clean vocals.
Low Point: Oliver Sykes is still really annoying.

Bring Me the Horizon recently released their third album and once again, their sound has changed, quite a bit.

Their first album, Count Your Blessings, was by all accounts a bread and butter Deathcore album and nothing to special. Their sophomore album, Suicide Season, saw a change to a more straight Metalcore sound and approach, with a larger and improved focus on meaty riffs and chunky breakdowns.

Their newest release, which I'll just refer to as Heaven and Hell, follows suit with their change of pace but kicks it up a notch musically. This album has a weird personality, to put it plainly. Songs which make you want to get up and break something often find themselves being followed by ones which are very melodic and at times 'mellow', in a partial sense. The easiest example I can give is the difference in between the tracks Fuck and Don't Go, the latter featuring guest vocals by LIGHTS, which honestly surprised the crap out of me - in a good way, she has a stellar voice, plus she's Canadian.

Bring Me the Horizon chose the song It Never Ends to be their first single, releasing a video for the song as well, a couple weeks prior to the album's release. Listen to a couple tracks from Suicide Season and then listen to this song and you'll see what I'm talking about when I mention musical progression. But don't take this negatively, the musical progression of the band is huge and I actually enjoy the majority of the album quite a bit.

So if you actually really kinda like this album, why the 3.5 and not a 4.0? Well, this is where I'll be blunt and honest, although I pointed it out at the beginning of the review: Oliver Sykes annoys the crap out of me, 85% of the time. I've heard vocals from a wide range of vocalists and in every genre known in the Milky Way, but there's just something about Oliver that, well, nails on chalk board - not all the time, but it's a deal breaker at times.

If you've never listened to BMTH before, I would suggest you check out a few of their older tracks, such as Chelsea Smile and The Comedown and then venture into this record.

Or you can throw that suggestion aside and listen to this record first, since it definitely is their best.

Bring Me the Horizon is headlining this Fall's AP Tour alongside August Burns Red and will be in Toronto and Montreal on November 21st and 22nd respectively. I would definitely go to that show purely to see ABR, but with this amount of musical improvement, I'd now consider seeing BMTH as being a decent bonus.

- J