The year is 2019 and had anyone told me I'd be writing about Bring Me The Horizon's new album I'd have hugged them with glee, just knowing the album would be worth writing about.
Now I'm decidedly less psyched.
For what it's worth, I don't hate the album. I think it's great that they're experimenting with new sounds and trying new things. I can think of at least 3 tracks that I love and I'd be damn excited to hear them live if these beautiful idiots ever decide to come to my side of the pond. I'm still a Bring Me The Horizon fan.
I won't say that it was the album I wanted, and it still remains to be seen if it'll grow on me.
That said, the discourse around this thing has gotten me feeling an entirely different way, and that's not helped by the glib tone that Amo can take about not being a metal record. If anything, I wish there was less "sorry, we're not metal, silly scene kids are just mad we aren't" there. I kind of wish they hadn't addressed it at all, because it's probably going to vastly diminish the staying power when the eventual "we're going back to our roots" announcement comes.
And that's just the thing, ain't it?
I don't think this one will have staying power. But now I've gotta deal with a bunch of jerk-offs calling me closed minded because I didn't love a pop album, which infuriates me to no end because it's not that I don't like pop albums, I just didn't really like this pop album. And not even that I didn't like any of it, just that I found a good 60% of it to be a kind of derivative and forgettable. And of that 60% there's bits I actually do like, a part of me just wishes those bits were on a better record. I knew what was coming, hell, I wanted an entire album's worth of songs as good as Follow You but I didn't get that. Sugar, Honey, Ice and Tea isn't just the name of one of the songs.
Which leaves me in the precarious position of being one of the few jerk-offs who gave this record a chance and didn't actually like it.
And what do I say to that?
Well, for starters, let me just dislike the album, for God's sake. A band is a brand and music is a product and if I don't like what you're selling please stop telling me that it's only because I like spending my money on one thing, maybe I just think what you're selling is a little shit? It didn't make me hopeful for the future of electropop like Lorde's Pure Heroine, it didn't intrigue me like Melanie Martinez's Cry Baby and it for damn sure didn't make me feel what Sam Smith makes me feel. Shit, Dua Lipa's New Rules has been stuck in my head for so long it may never leave. Now, Now released an album so thematically coherent that I'll die before I can finish counting off all the things I love about it. I like pop. I like a whole lot of pop. It's why I keep buying Punk Goes Pop records because nothing makes me happier than my favourite bands covering my favourite pop songs.
Amo kind of just came and went while I had to try very hard not to roll my eyes at it.
And yeah, I'm going to say that I'm disappointed that Bring Me isn't releasing metalcore but that started in 2015 and I've had plenty bigger disappointments since. I wanted to like Amo, hell, the lead singles got me really hyped for the album. But once it landed, once I took the whole thing in from start to end, it's just an underwhelming "meh". All I can really think was that, for an album trying so hard to be experimental, it sure ended up being plain and forgettable.
I'm sorry, I don't mean to hate on it. Quite frankly I expect it to get beaten up any minute now once the true genre warriors arrive. And they will, and I'll roll my eyes at them too. Bring Me wasn't this bastion of greatness in their Deathcore days, in fact, This Is What The Edge Of Your Seat Is Made For is such pure auditory white noise that after all these years I still can't tell you a damn notable thing about it. Count Your Blessings I'll still go in for, even if I think half of that record is also just a structureless mess, but the songs I like from CYB I at least love enough to give those songs a regular listening to.
Bring Me doesn't owe us a metal album, they don't even owe us a radio rock album. They can do whatever they want. But that doesn't mean I have to like what they put out. I don't owe them my undying love just because they released my favourite album in 2013, and I wish the kids who like Oli more for his haircut would get off my case about it.
But to those jackasses who still cling to the deathcore phase, guys, it's okay for a band to undergo a stylistic change. Usually it's better when that change is actually good, see Paramore's After Laughter for more, but I understand that people who make this music might get tired of making it. I'd argue that there's still much more room to explore the genre and recent interviews with Oli shows how deliriously out of touch he is with the scene, seriously, I get time is limited but music is your bread and butter man, you're supposed to be keeping your ear to the ground so you don't become an irrelevant dinosaur like Gene Simmons is trying his best to be.
But seriously, it's okay for bands to change. Not all change is growth but it's alright, sometimes we need to move sideways to move forward.
Just don't expect me to like it.
Also, there's a certain "grow up emo kid" attitude in the discourse, and to that I say, fuck off? No apologies, just, fuck off, you don't know what you're talking about, please stop letting your tastes be defined by the music you think you should like as an adult and have a little childish, unironic appreciation for stuff that's a little silly but at least has some energy to it. Like, when did we grow old, man? You can like the same albums you liked ten years ago, it's okay, it's not a phase, Dad! Just watch less cringe-culture vids and get off your soapbox.
And I'll be doing just that. That sure was a long way to say, the album was fine but not for me and I just wanna be left alone to listen to Avalanche for the 340th time as I cry alone in the shower.
See you next... Month? Or whenever I put the next one out. Sorry. Maybe I need flex tape to fix my upload schedule.
