OH NO

We’re now firmly in the back half of this series now; I wasn’t sure exactly how long I would end up writing it for, but I think that 10 entries is a nice, round number to aim for, and there are only so many bands from this era that I truly developed a strong emotional attachment to, which is the beating heart of this series. So, stay tuned for the final three entries– the way I have things set up, it looks like the series is going to end on October 28th, with an appropriately Halloween-themed band. If you were introduced to me through this series, stick around! I promise there will be cool new things for you to read! I’d also recommend checking out the podcast that I co-host about DIY music, the E Word, on Spotify, iTunes, and Twitter.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about Bring Me the Horizon. They were, at the time, the absolute epitome of a band that you were not allowed to like. The tr00 kids hated them because they were pretty and indulged in scene fashion, the mainstream music press hated them for the same reasons, and my mom hated them because they were loud and noisy. As time went on, the critics began to warm to the band (partially because they evolved into an artsy metalcore outfit and then into something more eclectic and boundary-pushing), but the band seems to accumulate as many haters as it does fans with each new album. Because of this, Bring Me the Horizon have the unique distinction of being a different kind of “Band You Weren’t Supposed to Like” to different people. Everyone has their opinion on which era of the band is shit and which is good. However, I am good and smart and my opinion is always correct, so you should listen to me over them. I have a prestigious blog, sir.

RAWWWRR!!

The roots of Bring Me the Horizon lie in Sheffield, England. I don’t know anything about England, so I won’t pretend to know what it was like for the band members growing up (although frontman Oliver Sykes has said about his heartbreak-focused lyrics of their earlier work, “My life’s never been that bad so I’ve not got that much to talk about”). According to Wikipedia, Sykes and drummer Matt Nicholls were fans of American hardcore bands like Norma Jean and Skycamefalling (which is a clutch name drop, by the way– that band is still extremely underrated), while their stalwart guitarist, Lee Malia, was an At the Gates fan who was killing time in a Metallica cover band. The band members were all teenagers at the time and, in 2004, this could even be considered a “diverse” set of influences for a British band. Hooking up with Matt Kean on bass and hiring on Curtis Ward as an auxiliary rhythm guitarist, the band continued to develop their melange of influences (everything from melodic American metalcore like Poison the Well and Every Time I Die to punishing, wonky mathcore like the Dillinger Escape Plan to the traditional death metal and grindcore of British pioneers like Carcass) and cut a basement demo, which led to their first EP, This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For.

For as annoying as it is when people bemoan the way that Bring Me the Horizon have tinkered with their sound over the years, slowly introducing more and more pop elements, it is admittedly a shock to go back to their very first EP and hear how heavy these songs were. Maybe the heaviness isn’t unprecedented (there’s lots of Dillinger Escape Plan worship in the skronky bits and time signature shakeups, and the breakdowns recall early 90s NYDM like Suffocation while the vocals are reminiscent of early Obituary), but it’s a damn sight more intense than what they’re doing now. Hell, this EP and their debut LP were both released on the distinguished death and grind label, Earache. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s better. Granted, I do think there’s a lot to like about This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For, from its likably scrappy production to its zany song titles (“Rawwwrr!!”, initially an onomatopoeia referring to Sykes’ animalistic vocals, foreshadows the “Rawr XD” era of MySpace pretty heavily, while “Who Wants Flowers When You’re Dead? Nobody.” is one of my favorite quotes from The Catcher In the Rye), but song-wise, the structure just isn’t there yet. The songs stretch themselves out to five minutes or more by force, and often feel like a collection of “brutal” parts that were thrown together without consideration to a central theme. “Flowers” is the exception to this rule, and it’s deservedly a standout, but even excellent moments like the extended breakdown that finishes out opener “RE: They Have No Reflections” lose a bit of their punch because they haven’t been earned within the song.

Like I said, though, this EP has its moments. There’s a dancey, panic chord-filled breakdown in “Rawwwrr!!” that wouldn’t feel out of place in, say, a .gif from god or Meth song in 2019, and there’s several moments where the song pauses so Sykes can do a spoken word breakdown intro, which is pretty cute and endearing (his speaking voice is borderline squeaky this early in their career). I’d also be remiss not to mention the spindly arpeggios that punctuate the fight riffs in the beginning of EP closer “Traitors Never Play Hangman,” in a moment that actually sounds closer to, say, “Shingles” by Converge than any of Bring Me the Horizon’s contemporaries. “Traitors Never Play Hangman” is also home to the best breakdown on the EP, a descending riff matching Sykes’s demonic vocals, along with some pitch-shifting, that closes the EP out on a high note.

While This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For isn’t perfect, it’s a promising debut EP from an early band, showing a variety of influences and a couple standout moments. Career-wise, the band was still in its infancy too, scamming their way onto tours and playing for beer money. All of that was soon to change with their next record, Count Your Blessings.

OFF THE HEEZAY

If you asked me to name the most hated album on metal blogs in 2006, Count Your Blessings would probably be the first one to come to my mind. Metal kids hated this album; everything from the band members’ skinny jeans and flat-ironed hair to the polished production to the abundance of breakdowns seemed tailor-made to incite the wrath of long-haired nerds who practice sweep-picking in their parents’ garage. It got so bad that they were often pelted with garbage from the audience and had fights picked with them during live performances.

While the band has grown to disregard Count Your Blessings as an inferior album in later years due to a variety of factors (many of the songs were written in three days prior to the album’s recording, and it is clearly heavily indebted– to an almost plagiaristic degree– to the riffs of bands like Arch Enemy, In Flames, and At the Gates), a growing contingent of the band’s fanbase regards Count Your Blessings as the pinnacle of the band’s sound. While I disagree with this opinion, I have to say that I unfairly dismissed this album for a long time simply due to the strength of the band’s next efforts.

Count Your Blessings is an extremely tight, clean, and well-polished deathcore record. It might actually have my favorite drum sound of any Bring Me the Horizon album– really tightly-tuned and organic. Sykes is also at his peak as a “metal” vocalist here. He’s got plenty of range, with well-defined higher shrieks mixing well with his gutturals. A lot of deathcore bands around this time often cheated with their lows, relying on inhale vocals, but it’s pretty clear that Sykes never did that.

However, this album is also pretty guilty of the background effect. “Pray for Plagues” is an extremely strong opener, but second track “Tell Slater Not to Wash His Dick” copies it wholesale. There’s not a whole lot of variety on the album as a whole; melodic death metal riffs succumb to breakdowns, the occasional solo serving to break up the monotony without ever giving songs their own unique identity. The songs are definitely more tightly constructed than on This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For, but when every song sounds the same, how much of an improvement is that, really?

I will say that “Tell Slater” does add one neat kink to the formula– there’s a high-pitched, achingly melodic tremolo riff at the end of the song that recalls the more Shai Hulud-esque direction that the band’s melodic metalcore moments would take in ensuing years. Unfortunately, it’s immediately followed by another forgettable riff salad, “Braille (For Stevie Wonder’s Eyes Only.” The whole album also suffers from Sykes’s misogynistic lyrics– this song includes the stunner “I’ll take everything, you fucking bitch,” with Sykes adding a lower tone to “bitch” for a thicker and heavier pre-breakdown moment. That tack would be copied by sexist deathcore bands for years to come, and it comes off the same way it does here: fucking insufferable. If it weren’t for the extremely energetic and heavy drumming, this album would feel like a lot more of a chore to get through.

“A Lot Like Vegas” is a shorter track that actually throws in some more traditional hardcore influence, with Sykes introducing his more emotionally-expressive shout for the first time and the band including some gang vocals right before a fairly memorable breakdown and a surprisingly melodic and restrained guitar solo. It quickly devolves into another generic melodeath song (although with yet another strong breakdown), but the first half of this song is one of the brighter spots on the record.

“Black & Blue” is also pretty strong, its breakneck pace recalling the early work of Darkest Hour, but it’s not strong enough to overlook the painful “I will dance on your fucking grave” breakdown. I feel like I should note that Sykes, despite being an excellent vocalist and an extremely charismatic frontman, never really improves as a lyricist. Still, every album is another step up from the garden-variety misogyny of this album. For his part, Lee Malia contributes another genuinely excellent guitar solo to the end of “Black & Blue,” but when half the song consists of a breakdown that gets dragged out long past its expiration date, I wonder if it only stands out because of the relative sameness.

“Slow Dance” is a genuinely interesting track, barely over a minute, with some intricate and neat guitar work, atmospheric keyboards, and anthemic melodeath riff cruising over one of the heaviest riffs on the album. I wish it had been worked into a longer song, but as an instrumental interlude, it helps to provide momentum and break up the constant onslaught of death metal theatrics. Its follow-up, “Liquor & Love Lost,” also benefits from a shorter running time (as well as some cool pick squeals), but I always find myself waiting for the guitar solo and the breakdown, which are the best parts of most of these songs. As a side note, I wish the bass was more pronounced; Matt Kean would get lots of moments to shine on later records, but he’s regrettably lost in the shuffle here, serving mostly to strengthen the bluntness of Matt Nicholls on the kit.

The album heads into its home stretch with the longest song on the album, the near-six-minute “(I Used to Make Out with) Medusa.” Does it justify its length? I’ll let the lyric “So why don’t you just fuck yourself, you fucking whore?” speak for itself. Not even another guitar solo can save this track from itself. I will say that it ends with one of the most gnarly breakdowns on the album, its sole saving grace; Sykes’s lows on this track near inhuman levels, and I am always impressed by his performance.

By now it should be clear that this band can definitely play their asses off, even if the technical riffs and tight rhythms are in service of weaker, generic songs. Still, it’s nice to hear the band relax a bit with the penultimate track, the acoustic “Fifteen Fathoms & Counting.” It’s arguably a cliche move to provide a respite to the chaos of the rest of the album, but I honestly love the melancholy, melodic, and somewhat folkish atmosphere of this song. It makes me wonder what Bring Me the Horizon may have been like as an indie rock band.

For all this album’s faults, I can’t say that it closes off weak– “Off the Heezay” is a consummate ripper, stacked with top to bottom energy and genuinely memorable riffs. If I recall correctly, this song had actually been around since their first demo, and it’s cool that they continued hammering it out, because it’s extremely good, on par with “Pray for Plagues.” If the band had released those two songs as a 7″ and then broken up, they might have been remembered as the greatest deathcore band of all time. This song’s got it all; it even throws in a weird off-time hold that recalls Gorguts, of all bands, as well as a stomping and catchy-as-fuck melodeath bridge that transitions into a thrillingly yearning climax.

I could definitely see a world where Bring Me the Horizon built upon the foundation of “Pray for Plagues” and “Off the Heezay” and became an extremely strong death metal/hardcore hybrid, but they threw in a cover of Slipknot’s “Eyeless” on the 2007 Hot Topic reissue of Count Your Blessings, which sneakily foreshadowed the direction they were soon to go– something chunkier, more indebted to out-and-out rock than the trappings of metal, but still with an extremely heavy, hardcore-influenced edge. For as much shit as Bring Me the Horizon got, they were going to throw it back in everyone’s face ten-fold.

SUICIDE SEASON

The lead-up to 2008’s Suicide Season was filled with tumult for Bring Me the Horizon; the band’s hard partying was catching up to them, as Sykes began to develop a nasty ketamine addiction (the most British of all drug addictions), and he was accused of urinating on a female fan (he was later cleared of all charges, although that didn’t stop him from dropping a vicious and perhaps ill-advised diss track on this record). Meanwhile, the hatred from concertgoers and the mainstream press was reaching fever pitch, and rhythm guitarist Curtis Ward was beginning to slack on his duties, only contributing three riffs to the writing of this album. Maybe the band growing from privileged British teenagers into surly, emotionally-volatile twenty-somethings thrust into the national spotlight wasn’t great for their mental health, but it sure made for some excellent, emotionally-charged music.

Recruiting the acclaimed melodeath producer Fredrik Nordstorm to man the boards on this release was an excellent decision, as this record sounds absolutely incredible; chunky and melodic by turns when it needs to be, with a much more pronounced bass tone, this is probably one of the best-sounding Bring Me the Horizon albums (especially when compared to the compressed and gross production job on what many consider to be their magnum opus, Sempiternal).

Sykes also turns in his best vocal performance yet; although he hasn’t completely abandoned his more metallic gutturals and shrieks, he employs them only sparingly here, instead relying on a pained, howling scream that sounds a lot like Keith Buckley does on early Every Time I Die records.

The band also isn’t afraid to use the studio to their advantage– the muted, vaguely electronic intro that announces opener “The Comedown” and the tinkering during the bridge of “Chelsea Smile” are seamless and tasteful, while Sykes uses muting and electronic delay to make the desperate climax of the closing title track sound disconnected, desolate, and cold.

These improvements would all be for naught if Suicide Season wasn’t an extremely strong collection of songs. Not only have Bring Me the Horizon refined their ability to write songs around a strong central theme, each song has its own identity and extremely memorable moments. The “Repent, repent/We’re all gonna die” breakdown in “Chelsea Smile” is one of the brightest spots in their entire discography, being full orders of magnitude heavier than anything they’d done before while also sitting right next to one of the most melodic passages on the album, with Sykes actually managing to pen some evocative and emotional lyrics about questioning his faith (“If I don’t believe in him, why would he believe in me?”).

Bring Me the Horizon have finally managed to combine their heaviness with an ear for infectious hooks, turning Sykes’s howls of pain into scream-along anthems. The chorus of “It Was Written In Blood” should by rights not be catchy at all, but the juxtaposition of Sykes’s timbre and tonality with Malia’s not-too-technical and extremely propulsive guitar work turns it into one of the strongest entries on the album even before the achingly emotive bridge, which reminds me of bands like Strongarm or Hopesfall, but with better production and songwriting aimed for stadiums.

Though still stronger than a song by any of their contemporaries, I feel as if “Death Breath” is one of the more forgettable songs on Suicide Season, but that’s really not saying much. It still boasts an ass-beating nu-metal derived riff (honestly, the guitar sound on this album is really ahead of its time, and I hear newer, more djent-influenced bands ripping it off all the time) and a tight, technical drum performance that makes the song (it’s one of the longer ones on the album, clocking in at 4:20) fly by in no time. Plus, there’s another cool, electronica-influenced moment in the bridge that adds some extra flavor. What I’m trying to say is that “Death Breath” doesn’t at all feel like an obstacle between two of the biggest standouts on the record, “It Was Written In Blood” and “Football Season Is Over.”

Featuring guest vocals from JJ Peters of Deez Nuts, “Football Season Is Over” is one of two short-but-heavy-as-fuck songs on Suicide Season. Rather than shoving all their hardcore influences into the shorter songs, Bring Me the Horizon makes the shorter songs home to the most brutal and technical metal moments on the album, with a skronky finger-aching riff and a rare appearance of Sykes’s high shriek. Still, the breakdown that closes the song out is one of the most straightforward and fun moments on the album, simultaneously a paean to and condemnation of the band’s constantly-drunken image.

The back half of the album kicks off with “Sleep with One Eye Open,” home to one of the most sludgy riffs in the band’s career, as well as an excitingly immature “Fuck you!” gang vocal shout. Like “Death Breath,” “One Eye Open” is one of the less memorable moments on the album, but it’s still as close to chaotic as Bring Me the Horizon would get on this record, filled with speedy drum fills, gnarly vocal performances, a sick down-tuned bass riff that drives the bridge, and one of the more badass breakdown boasts in the band’s history– “You better beg for mercy, get on your fucking knees and cry me a fucking river.” As far as bitter friend-kiss-offs go, you could do a lot worse.

Also like “Death Breath,” “One Eye Open” probably only seems a bit weaker because it sits in between the onslaught of “Football Season Is Over” and the outright best song on the album, “Diamonds Aren’t Forever.” I saw this hoodie on almost as many scene kids as that Suicide Silence “Pull the trigger, bitch” hoodie, which speaks to this song’s innate ability to be ridiculously heavy and catchy at the same time. The gang-vocal breakdown chant of “We will never sleep/cuz sleep is for the weak/and we will never rest/til we’re all fucking dead” contrasts extremely well with the unhinged energy of the verses, all inchoate guitar riffs and one of Sykes’s most brutal vocal performances on the album (topped only by the penultimate track, which we’ll get to momentarily). Clocking in just a few seconds short of four minutes, it’s a metalcore anthem for the ages, and I doubt I’ll ever tire of it. I refuse to close my eyes.

“The Sadness Will Never End” is in many ways the emotional climax of the album, the endgame for a record that’s full of heartbreak and desperation. The quiet ambience at the beginning is a hint to this song’s modus operandi, as it’s one of the more melodic and desperate songs on the album. Sam Carter from Architects contributes some excellent clean vocals that complement Sykes’s screams rather will, while the constant high-pitched guitar accents assist in establishing the song’s pained, miserable atmosphere. This song also never stops developing new parts, exploring new sonic avenues without ever deviating from the central structure and ideas. It’s an extremely impressive piece of metalcore songwriting, and it’s just a bonus that Malia throws in a short-but-sweet guitar solo to help close the song out, one of the rare appearances of a solo on this more hardcore-oriented record.

After an easy-listening interlude, we’re bombarded with the shortest track on the album, the sub-minute “No Need for Introductions, I’ve Read About Girls Like You On the Backs of Toilet Doors.” This song is kind of gross– the title is slut-shamey as hell, and lyrically wishes death on the fan that accused Sykes of pissing on her. Right before the breakdown, he screams in probably the most committed fashion on the album, “And after everything you put me through, I should have fucking pissed on you.” It’s a questionable decision and not one of the band’s more distinguished moments. But holy hell, this song goes hard, unfortunately. Sykes’s lows during the verse are disgustingly good and the breakdown is the heaviest one they’ve ever written. Damn shame.

Including “No Need” on the album might have been a bit of mistake in terms of pacing, too; the song after, the titular closing track, is a melding of post-hardcore, metalcore, and electronica that explores the impact that suicide can have on the friends and family of those who make that choice, and it would have made more sense immediately following the optimism and sensitivity of “The Sadness Will Never End.” Still, “Suicide Season” is an incredible song, wasting not one moment of its eight-minute (!!!) runtime, and when I declare that Suicide Season is one of the musical peaks of the Hot Topic/scene era of metalcore, this is the song that I have in mind.

Suicide Season was pretty much an immediate hit, and the band could have easily stuck with this sound, too, and made lots of bank off it. However, ever forward-thinking, they booted that slacker Curtis Ward from the band (to be replaced by guitarist/keyboardist/drama inciter Jona Weinhofen) and began writing even more artsy, melodic, and progressive metalcore songs for their follow-up. Not for nothing, But Bring Me the Horizon were also early adopters and boosters of the then-nascent crossover between the electronic and metalcore/post-hardcore scenes, releasing a remix album of Suicide Season featuring production work from established electronic artists like KC Blitz and the Secret Handshake, as well as dabbling from Ben Weinman of the Dillinger Escape Plan and Travie McCoy from Gym Class Heroes, and an early contribution from former From First to Last frontman Sonny Moore, then going by the moniker Skrillex.

BLESSED WITH A CURSE

There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret. is Bring Me the Horizon’s masterpiece. As much as I adore Suicide Season, I think that There Is A Hell takes a lot of what made that album work so well and amps it up to eleven, fine-tuning the process, getting slightly more experimental and nuanced in their compositions, and ultimately making a cohesive album that flows in a natural and logical order rather than just being a collection of songs. With Fredrik Nordstrom back behind the boards, this album’s production sounds just as perfect for their sound as Suicide Season did, but with the strength of the new songs, it just feels like a huge step up.

The songs are genuinely varied in tone and emotion as well, not just on a track-by-track basis, but within the songs themselves. Opener “Crucify Me” is a six-minute epic that goes from a gentle, plunky guitar intro to a catchy and anthemic metalcore section before incorporating choral influences and glitched-out guest vocals from indietronica luminary Lights, and slowly melding all of them into a chaotic-yet-coherent climax that feels transcendent, especially compared to both the band’s peers and their own back catalog. Of course, “Crucify Me” is immediately followed by “Anthem,” a heavy Suicide Season throwback that feels more polished and immediate than even the best songs on that album. The production on There Is A Hell might actually be even crisper and clearer than Season; the short-but-sweet breakdown at the end of “Anthem” sounds incredible, each element of the band’s sound both clearly audible and of a piece with everything else.

The band continues to flirt with the two polarized elements of their sound with “It Never Ends,” an ambient intro segueing into a rollicking metalcore banger that nonetheless incorporates symphonic elements and atmospheric tremolo sections (sounding at times like the scenecore version of, like, Wolves In the Throne Room or something). The chorus of “It Never Ends” is one of the brightest and most vital in the band’s career, feeling both desperate and victorious all at once. When the song does lapse into chug riffs, they feel earned and appropriate, never overwhelming the tone that the band is working to cultivate throughout the album. For as heavy and bombastic as Bring Me’s sound is, there’s a sense of thoughtfulness and melancholy that pervades every one of these songs. The climax of the song, for as blunt and lacking in artifice as Sykes’s lyrics are, is strikingly beautiful, in a scenecore kind of way.

“Fuck” continues this trend, being both the most aggressive song on the album yet as well as being at its core a love song. John Franceschi of You Me At Six contributes clean vocals to the song, most apparent in the bridge, that hang in the air like an open wound, standing in stark contrast to both the hardcore punk verses and the intimidating, bent-note guitar fury in the slowdown sections. Strong dynamics are the key to my heart, and when “Fuck” intersperses its angry furor with moments of orchestral quietude and a monumental post-hardcore climax, I find exactly what I’m looking for.

The end of “Fuck” artfully segues into “Don’t Go,” another Lights-assisted banger. Rather than spinning between tones like “Crucify Me,” “Don’t Go” is a slow-burner, Sykes’s screams lying over a string-soaked, gentle build-up. Although you know the intense, melodically pained metalcore climax is coming, “Don’t Go” teases it with brief moments of intensity that make the softer moments (like Lights’s contributions) stand out even more. The marching-band drum rolls that come in near the end assist in building tension, and the band drags out the ending of the track for as long as possible, relishing in the anguish.

Of course, too many restrained and borderline-beautiful songs does not a metalcore album make, and the back half of There Is A Hell is populated by a run of hard-hitting bangers that don’t allow the listener even one moment of respite. Despite throwing in moments of that newfound aching melody, “Home Sweet Hole” stacks gang vocals on top of groovy, rhythmic chunks of guitar and builds up to a stunning finale before returning to that same gang vocal chorus. Bring Me uses the same trick over and over again on this album, but somehow I never tire of it.

“Alligator Blood” might be the high-water mark of an already stellar record, perhaps being the heaviest song that the band has ever written. It’s a breathtaking roller coaster ride to a vicious breakdown, with some of the most cathartic vocals in the band’s catalog. The end of this song makes me want to crowdkill babies.

If there’s one moment on this album where I start to feel fatigue, it might be “Visions.” Although still a very good song, it just doesn’t quite feel up to snuff to the rest of the album. It’s a shame that it’s stacked next to the best songs that Bring Me the Horizon has ever written, because it would be the best song on either Suicide Season (by a little) or Sempiternal (by a lot) with its head-nodding main riff, but ultimately it feels just a little less purposeful than the rest of the record.

“Blacklist,” by contrast, is fueled so strongly by its sludgy, down-tuned, absurdly heavy atmosphere (including the strongest and most effective bass work of the album). The lyrics complement the miserable atmosphere provided by the instrumental, evoking the collapse of a friendship, but coming off more awash in general misanthropy than specific anger. The song lopes along until it doesn’t, but it’s an intensely enjoyable experience, with Malia including another brief but fitting and melodic guitar solo to accent the affair.

There’s a brief, ambient interlude (the vaguely sad but mostly aesthetic “Memorial”), and then we’re into the album’s final act. “Blessed with a Curse” is a monster of a track– of course the loud/quiet dynamic is predictable, but it’s also thrilling, and when the heaviness does come in, it feels both appropriate and more intense than anything on the album previous. The subtle electronic touches add a lot too, both foreshadowing the band’s future direction and adding a sense of unnerving tension to the proceedings. I also love the jazzy, soft-rock influenced guitar work near the end of the track– listen closely, and I swear you can hear a Dire Straits influence.

“Blessed with a Curse” may have been the most logical conclusion of the album, but I quite enjoy that the band chose instead to close with the two-minute hardcore barn-burner “The Fox & the Wolf,” a fast-paced firestorm that revels in perfectly-placed gang vocals, unstoppable energy, an absolutely monstrous breakdown, and a truly incredible guest vocal performance from Josh Scogin of the Chariot. It’s the perfect shot of adrenaline to put the cap on this era of Bring Me the Horizon’s career.

SLEEPWALKING

Unfortunately for you Bring Me the Horizon fans out there reading this, I’m going to gloss over the next phase of their career. Sempiternal is often regarded as Bring Me’s masterpiece, but I find that assertion borderline-offensive when they’ve produced metalcore albums as fully-realized and well-constructed as Suicide Season and There Is A Hell. For one, the record’s production– handled by veteran metal producer Terry Date– is blown-out to all hell, and for another, the band’s songwriting feels fundamentally uninspired. They’re using a lot of tricks that they have in the past– including the use of keyboards to sculpt soundscapes, baking them into the structure of the song rather than simply using them for ambience– but they feel hollow and calculated now. There’s the inclusion of post-rock influence, most apparent on the passable closer “Hospital for Souls,” but mostly it feels ancillary to the new direction that Bring Me seemed to be taking: butt rock.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge fan of previously hardcore or metalcore bands going full hard rock (check out this post if you don’t believe me) but it’s hard not to feel like Bring Me’s dabbling in the genre was cynical. Granted, it does produce some great tracks– “Go to Hell for Heaven’s Sake” is one of the most palpably fun anthems the band has ever recorded, and “Shadow Moses” is justifiably one of their biggest hits, heavy-ass breakdown and all– but songs like the ugly opener “Can You Feel My Heart?” and painfully dumb lyrics like “I can’t drown my demons, they know how to swim” serve to weigh the whole affair down.

There’s some interesting ideas being played with here– the clean-vocal-laden “And the Snakes Start to Sing” and the aforementioned “Hospital for Souls,” for example– but they’re often lost in the shuffle of interchangeable, rote kinda-hard-rock-kinda-metalcore songs like “The House of Wolves”, “Seen It All Before,” and “Empire (Let Them Sing).” There’s also “Antivist,” which on the surface is a pretty fun and heavy metalcore track, but lyrically is a downright embarrassing pile of invective aimed against “internet activists” (SJWs, I guess? Maybe people who thought that releasing a song threatening to urinate on a girl who already accused you of urinating on her wasn’t the best idea?). “Crooked Young” is also a pretty dumb track, with Sykes exaggerating a faux-Cockney accent to say “yoof” rather than “youth.”

It’s ultimately rather disappointing that Sempiternal ended up being both their most popular to album to that point in their career as well as their most critically acclaimed– in my opinion, they explored much more varied and interesting sounds with a lot more consistency and vitality on their previous records. Bring Me’s fanbase has splintered multiple times, and while the faction who continuously clamor for the band to play “Pray for Plagues” every night are annoying, I think they’re quite a bit less irritating than the people who consider Sandpit Turtle to be their best. Worse yet, I can’t believe that this is the album that brought so many people over from the “Bring Me the Horizon are sceney-weenie garbage” camp over to the “Bring Me the Horizon are the most artistically accomplished band in metalcore” camp. Neither of these viewpoints are true, and both betray a narrow-minded worldview (the former being much more toxic, granted), but I implore them to give Suicide Season and There Is A Hell an honest chance.

Of course, I don’t begrudge Bring Me for leaning into the more commercial rock aspects of their sound– it’s a smart move financially, and they probably feel a lot better as pop stars than the metalcore band that got beer bottles flung at their heads– but artistically, I can’t really say that it paid dividends on That’s the Spirit. Honestly, the brightest spots on the album are the most obvious bids for radio play– “Happy Song” is as ironic as it is exuberant, a sardonic cheerleading chant augmenting an already enormous chorus, and “Throne” sounds like Linkin Park’s “Faint” retooled for the modern day (I mean that as a compliment)– but they’re still bogged down by some of the worst lyrics that even the poetically-challenged Sykes has ever written. Come on, “True friends stab you in the front?” That sounds like an outtake from the “Sleep with One Eye Open” breakdown.

Still, with Weinhofen having been booted from the band and replaced with much more accomplished programmer Jordan Fish, the band does seem to have embraced the more electronic leanings of their sound to pretty strong effect, and “Doomed” and “Drown” are both very strong pop songs. Hell, the closing track “Oh No” even features a trance breakdown. In retrospect, it wasn’t shocking to learn that That’s the Spirit spawned seven radio singles– the whole goal of the album was to get Bring Me on mainstream radio, and it totally worked. It topped even the commercial heights of Sempiternal, and I even ended up hearing “Throne” and “Happy Song” on my local pop/rock station (94.1 in Las Vegas, in case you were wondering).

Even with That’s the Spirit being a commercial juggernaut (it recently topped 1 billion cumulative streams on Spotify, holy shit), I don’t think anyone could have been prepared for the next step that Bring Me took. I’ve taken great care to frame this band as one whose audience is absolutely never happy with their new album until they put out their next (at which point the previous record becomes an “underrated classic”), but I can’t stress enough how much Amo pissed everyone off. Well, except for critics (it’s one of their most critically acclaimed albums to date). Oh, and I guess the record-buying general public (it’s on track to top even That’s the Spirit). Guess a band can’t make a living playing entirely to the interests of kids who do nothing but shitpost in metalcore Discord servers all day.

THIS SHIT AIN’T HEAVY METAL

I love pop music, and Bring Me the Horizon’s Amo is a pure pop album (although the packaging looks like something Eighteen Visions would have signed off on around the time of Vanity or Obsession). This might shock you, given my hatred of both the vapid, high-gloss wonk peddled by the modern-day iterations Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco, as well as the faux-underground pabulum that the managers of Twenty One Pilots and Billie Eilish keep trying to pawn off as youth culture, but pop music is good, and it can be artistic, and important, and extremely well-made. Look at Paramore’s self-titled album. It also doesn’t have to be any of those things to be good or even great; look at the wave of (semi-)DIY SoundCloud artists who have combined mall-emo with e-thot culture to give the pop landscape a shot in the arm. Other artists, like $uicideboy$ or Denzel Curry, fuse trap aesthetics with the energy of hardcore or metalcore to produce something truly interesting and exciting. I feel like I repeat a lot of the same points in these articles, but they always bear repeating, because they’re true, and people need to pay attention.

So when I tell you that Bring Me the Horizon’s Amo is a damn fine pop album, you should pay attention. I kept being told that it was going to be a garbage album when I started researching this article (and, granted, my hopes weren’t all that high after Sempiternal and That’s the Spirit), but I ended up being really surprised by just how pleasant the experience of listening to Amo was. From the lush bleep-bloops that adorn the opener “I Apologize If You Feel Something” to the sarcastic breakdown that they throw in at the end of the hater-baiting “Heavy Metal,” Amo is expertly constructed and produced. If there’s one low point, it might be lead single “Mantra,” which pretty much just traffics in the same radio rock as That’s the Spirit, but even that song boasts an extremely strong bass line and an infectious chorus (despite some laughably wretched lyrics).

There’s a little something for everyone on Amo, whether it be the backpacker-inspired hip-hop interlude “Ouch” (which seriously sounds like something Dan the Automator might have had a hand in) or the blissed-out electronica euphoria that closes the Grimes-assisted standout “Nihilist Blues.” “In the Dark” rides a fun bass line and jazz-pop chords through to a lush and gorgeous bridge, showing that Sykes has truly come into his own as a clean singer. Cradle of Filth’s Dani Filth shows up on the handclap-driven, catchy, and surprisingly heavy “Wonderful Life,” which shows that Bring Me can groove on a djent breakdown with the best of them while still constructing an absolutely effervescent chorus.

The hits keep coming throughout the album’s staggering 51-minute run time, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it has as many if not more singles as That’s the Spirit. “Medicine” is extremely enjoyable pop rock, while “Sugar, Honey, Ice & Tea” is yet another kinda-heavy-but-still-poppy banger. “Why You Gotta Kick Me When I’m Down?” is a well-produced pure pop song, something that I wouldn’t be surprised to hear on the radio but I am mildly surprised to hear coming from Bring Me the Horizon. “Fresh Bruises” is another pleasant surprise, a minimalist, dark piece of, I don’t know, chillwave? I have no idea which electronic genres are which, but “Fresh Bruises” is really fun. “Mother Tongue” is another bid for pop radio, and it’s incredible in its own way, brimming with sticky-sweet high notes and a reserved-yet-bouncy energy.

I mentioned “Heavy Metal” as a standout already, but I can’t oversell how fun it is to hear Sykes make fun of kids on Instagram who complain about Bring Me’s new direction. Maybe it’s a little unhealthy to be so focused on the opinions of dumb kids on the internet, but I think that Bring Me’s aggressive change in direction with each new album shows that they’re not actually all that bothered (even if it is a little painful to hear that he can’t quite scream like he used to at the end of the track, this song is definitely worth a listen if only to hear an extremely random beatboxing appearance from everyone’s favorite ex-Roots member, Rahzel).

The string-soaked, acoustically-assisted closer “I Don’t Know What to Say” is the perfect closer for this album, striking the right balance of pop and melancholy. It even throws in a (distorted, buried, and faux-lo-fi) guitar solo to extremely strong effect, and it definitely earns its six-minute run time. Altogether, I’m extremely impressed with Amo and I hope that regular readers get mad at how much I fall head over heels for well-made pop music.

CRUCIFY ME

Altogether, Bring Me the Horizon was one of the most interesting case studies I’ve done for this series. They kind of came into my life at the tail-end of my involvement with the mainstream “scene” version of metalcore, post-hardcore, pop-punk, and what have you, but they were good enough to keep me invested while I was knee-deep in local hardcore shows, posting about obscure 90s emotive hardcore on the internet, and listening to Panic! at the Disco in furtive secrecy. I understandably lost touch with them these past few years, but I look forward to seeing how well Amo holds up, and I’m very excited to see which steps they take next. Bring Me the Horizon always has their finger on the pulse of pop culture, and I trust that they’ll follow the zeitgeist to a cool and interesting new place.

Am I embarrassed to be a fan of Bring Me the Horizon? Nope, and if you are, repent, because the end is nigh. Or, alternatively, Drop Dead.

NEXT WEEK: God called in sick, so you’re getting AFI instead. Welcome to October, motherfuckers.