When I first heard Bring Me The Horizon's Sempiternal, it was on a golf cart, wind tunneling past us, and my friend was playing it through his Samsung Galaxy S2 connected to one of those ShoX mini speakers.
The first track he played was Go To Hell For Heaven's Sake, which honestly was the best choice. The song is the perfect microcosm of what the album is about, what the album is like stylistically, and what Bring Me The Horizon stood for. It's a scathing self-critique told as though Sykes were speaking to another person.
At the time I wasn't really all that deep into anything heavier than Bullet For My Valentine. I liked a lot of alt-rock, I loved a lot of indie, there were a bunch of top 40s hits but my favourites were guys like The Foo Fighters, Sparks The Rescue, The Used, My Chemical Romance, Rob Zombie, ACDC and the likes.
Hearing Go To Hell was kind of a revelation. I had a friend I chastised for really liking super heavy music, and to me it was like a betrayal of what metal was supposed to be (I had no idea what metal was supposed to be, Kiss, Black Sabbath and Dragonforce was about the extent of my experience).
But here it was, this song that was heavy but accessible. Relatable. Angry, but not sadistic, more like frustrated. And each song had a little hook. I remember, after asking to borrow the album, putting it in and hearing Empire's "They came like moths to a flame, you lift like a house in a hurricane" or Shadow Moses's "This is sempiternal" or Go To Hell's "When did the diamonds leave your bones". Little moments that kept the album nagging at me in the back of my head.
But then the showstealer track came along; Sleepwalking.
Sleepwalking is hands down the best track Bring Me The Horizon have ever written. It's catchy, it can be heavy, it can be a jam, and all around, it just captured a feeling I knew I'd been experiencing.
"Time stood still, the way it did before
Feels like I'm sleepwalking
Fell into another hole again
Feels like I'm sleepwalking"
It was powerful.
Sempiternal, after all, is an album about mental health. It's an album about facing yourself. It's an album of dealing with that anger.
It's also about the betrayal that comes with disillusionment with religion, another thing that hit me quite hard.
"When you die, the only kingdom you'll see is two foot wide and six foot deep"
Lyrics like that. House Of Wolves expressed my frustrations with church politics, and what leaving that environment was like, seeing it all clearly for the first time.While I'd long since come out as an atheist, to just hear that experience so concisely captured, it was revelatory. Not just that, it was like this album had been written for me.
After that, the deluxe edition came out. The two tracks that, while I adore them, never felt like they really belonged on the album were Crooked Young and Deathbeds. Crooked Young felt so much more juvenile, lyrically at least, and it's a little derivative of previous orchestral accompaniments Bring Me The Horizon has used. Deathbeds is just all round an amazing song, but it's such an odd little inclusion.
"That little kiss you stole
It held my heart and soul
And like a deer in the headlights
I meet my fate
Don't try to fight the storm
You'll tumble overboard
The tides will bring me back to you
On my deathbed, all I'll see if you
The life my leave my lungs
But my heart will stay with you"
It's such an honest and open love song that it's so juxtaposed with the rest of the album. In a bubble, I do like, but if I'm giving the album a listen through, I save it for last.
One track I think is criminally underrated is And The Snakes Start To Sing.
"I'm just a would've been, could've been, never was and never ever will be"
The song sometimes comes off as the culmination of this frustration, the height of it all, starting off calm but ending in this huge bridge that lashes out, that questions, that pushes back. It asks those questions.
I love it.
This album inspired me, it showed me a certain way to use my voice, and it solidified my love for this band. It's the album I hope to make one day, in what it means and what it does. It was a crucial stepping stone for me, and without it, I don't think I'd like metal as much as I do today.
Sempiternal is, simply put, my favourite record. I love it dearly. I hope more people get to experience it.
And that Coldplay admits they blatantly ripped off the cover, jussayin'.
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