It's been a good long while since I've enjoyed seriously enjoyed a true metal album. And I mean true in the sense that it's little more than brutal riffs, brutal vocals, brutal drums, brutal, brutal, brutal. As a teenager I went through a bit of a metal phase the same way I go through all musical phases: get knee deep in a genre, listen to a whole bunch of it, eventually get slightly bored, shed excess uninteresting material, keep the really good stuff. There's few remnants in my music library of this phase: Dark Tranquillity, Killswitch Engage, and In Flames being the most prominent. But over the years, I've found myself skewing in a more pop direction. That's not to say I don't still enjoy metal; just that I've found myself less patient with the more extreme examples of the genre.
Bring Me The Horizon's There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret is not the most extreme metal out there. It's certainly a distance from Cannibal Corpse or similar bands. But it's also far removed from the average pop metalcore that dominates the scene.
But this isn't a post about the state of metal, what it is, or what it once was. This is about one album. A very good album. Start with the striking title (though title obviously has nothing to do with quality). It's a catchy title, one I've been repeating to myself since first hearing it (the last album I really did this with was The Chariot's 2004 effort Everything Is Alive, Everything Is Breathing, Nothing Is Dead, And Nothing Is Bleeding, an album I still haven't actually heard. Great title though). But the title is what brought me to the album. It intrigued me. In fact, I knew nothing of BMTH, name aside. I was vaguely aware of them in the way that I knew they were "metal". But I was unsure whether they were straight metal, or metalcore/screamo. In any case, I never bothered checking them out as I didn't think that I'd be into it either way.
But then that title. I suppose it was the poetic cadence of it. I figured I'd at least check a song. So I went to Youtube, and found the video for the album's first single, It Never Ends.
The intro was expected. Not necessarily generic, but expected. Vocals will make or break any song for me, and that's what I was waiting for. We get a look at frontman Oliver Sykes before he starts singing, and see what looks like the average scene kid: skinny, heavily tattooed, floppy hair, dark clothes. I braced myself, awaiting either a throat shredding scream, or a clean, technically tailored voice.
I got neither.
Sykes sings in a voice that bridges the gap between the two styles. The song itself is the story of a relationship gone sour. But Sykes sings with a kind of desperation that transcends the material to make it far more affecting than it has any right to be. The vocals get slightly less nuanced as the song goes on, but Syke's rawness on the final lines "Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every day. It never ends. It never ends." brings the song to a memorable end. The video itself is a subject for another day, but I found many of the visuals very arresting, notably Sykes seemingly hung from an invisible noose, gliding his way through various backgrounds.
Not that the album is a highly sentimental affair (you know where a band stands when they name a song "Fuck"). It is, however, very listenable. The albums highlight may well be the rather epic 6 minute plus opener "Crucify Me", featuring a delicate female vocal from current Canadian popstar Lights (a rather unexpected cameo to find on an album from a British metal band). There are other high points peppered throughout, notably the gently sad plea to God of Don't Go, and the all too brief instrumental Memorial.
I wasn't expecting to care for this album at all, but it ended up being very addictive. Check this one out if you're a metal fan.
