Review; Bring Me The Horizon's Count Your Blessings

Count Your Blessings is a mean spirited album which is more intent on trying to emulate the style of The Black Dahlia Murder while slutshaming on 60% of the tracks. There are musical ideas in here that I think are worth exploring, I think the unashamed guitar solos and pick squeals and breakdowns are fun to listen to but lyrically, for, all but three songs, Count Your Blessings really is more about trying to sound like the most annoying teenager on Myspace, with such prize winning lyrics as "Fuck yourself you stupid fucking whore".

That said, the few good tracks on here are very enjoyable. Pray For Plagues, A Lot Like Vegas and Tell Slater Not To Wash His Dick hold up as some of the most enjoyable of the genre and the two instrumental pieces really do improve the pacing of the album, whereas songs  like (I Used To Make Out With Medusa) drag and are just Bring Me The Horizon at their absolute worst. The Hot Topic version of Slipknot's Eyeless you'll either love or hate, and I'm personally fond of the stylistic quirks of Bring Me The Horizon put onto, to be frank, a much better songwriter's track.

It's just a genuine shame that for 70% of it, you're going to be wishing you were listening to Suicide Season instead.

While they've grown a lot in the years, this is an album which while formative, doesn't hold up as well as you'd think. There's better deathcore and there's better Bring Me The Horizon albums out there so playlist the two or three songs you actually end up liking and dump the rest.

Read More

It's Not A Phase, Dad! Also, I Didn't Like Amo.

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.

Read More

Day 14: A Music Album And Why It Was Inspiring

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"

Even back then I knew what the feeling was of going into auto-pilot for days on end without really having a lot of lucid moments. The frustration of that feeling. Trying to reach out. That quiet self-hatred when you are perfectly lucid, and the disorientation and directionlessness that comes in those lucid moments. "I'm at the edge of the world, where do I go from here, do I disappear?"

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'.

Read More