Kingcrimsonprog ‘There is a Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There is a Heaven, Let’s Keep it a Secret,’ is the third full length studio album from British metal band Bring Me The Horizon. The album is one of the most adventurous and exciting records to have been released in years and is chocked full of dynamic, boundary pushing material that is likely to alienate as many people as it delights.

Bring Me The Horizon started out mixing extreme metal with metal core and as time went on reduced the number of straight up death metal riffs, death growls and blast beats until now, with their third studio album there is scarcely a second of music that sounds like a strictly death metal band would play, if this is a problem for you it may make sense to give this album a miss.

For everyone who enjoyed ‘Suicide Season,’ and its electronic moments, vocal approach and powerful emotion guitar moments this album is the logical conclusion, expanding on all these areas, basing entire songs around things that were only in parts of the previous album and while using barely any death vocals and not a single blast beat they have kept things fresh by introducing numerous clean vocals, acoustic passages and keyboard lines.

The best example of this style is the opening track, lyrically containing the album title sang by a female vocalist then electronically cut up and played like a keyboard solo in the same song that contains a clean intro, furious fast paced verses and a monster brakedown in the style of bands like Hatebreed and Chimaira towards the end.

If you are worried that the album won’t be heavy enough, that the brakedowns are gone or that the album is too much of a departure from the excellent ‘Suicide Season,’ sound then you will be delighted with tracks like ‘Anthem,’ ‘Visions,’ and ‘The Fox and the Wolf,’ which very much pick up where ‘Suicide Season,’ left off so while the album does contain a great deal of innovative ideas and cover lots of new ground, there is still enough of what the band had been doing previously to ease the transition and connect the two styles together comfortably.

Standout tracks include the fantastic opener ‘Crucify Me,’ along wit the powerful semi-ballads ‘Don’t Go,’ and ‘Blessed With A Curse,’ all of which exemplify just what makes this record so great; fresh ideas, inspired performances and truly unique music.

There is a Hell’ is honestly the best album the band have released and it is without hyperbole the best album the genre and the country has offered in some time, I can’t recommend it any more highly.

Kingcrimsonprog I know Bring Me The Horizon are one of those bands that are popular to dislike and that a great many internet users have problems with the band’s front-man Oli Sykes. Regardless, I came to the band with a relativly open mind assured that they would be the type of band that I’d like because I enjoy Hatebreed style bands, At The Drive In style bands and the Nine Inch Nails style electro moments.

This turned out to be a great suggestion, as Suicide Season has rarely left my stereo since I got it. Talented musicians writing interesting and inventive songs, what more could anybody expect or even want?

The album was definitely a grower and on repeat listens you get all the little touches, all the one off riffs will stick in your head and the gang chant vocals will shift in your opinion from something that is a bit cheesy and out of place to something to genuinely look forward to.High pitched vocals over drumming that uses the Crash Cymbal like a hi-hat and a lot of hardcore style breakdowns, is a pretty accurate way to describe every song on this record, with a few songs containing Death Growls and a few containing electro drums and effects to add a little variety.

Stand out tracks contain the lyrically intense ‘Suicide Season,’ which is eight plus minutes long and mixes the heavier stuff with the electro side and the very heavy and very catchy ‘Diamonds Aren’t Forever,’ which contains so many sing along moments in its short duration it feels like half an albums worth of choruses.

Fair enough, the band may have inspired your dislike for the way the have acted, dressed or what they have said but just give this album an honest, unprejudiced listen and you will find a genuinely great modern heavy album.

Kingcrimsonprog Bring Me The Horizon’s debut studio album Count Your Blessings is quite different from the albums which would follow it. Whether you would call later albums too light or this album too heavy may affect your enjoyment of this album, in a manner which largely depends on your taste for either extreme metal or metalcore and also possibly which version of the band you heard first.

If you’ve only heard Bring Me The Horizon’s later albums you may be surprised by this record, which features no clean vocals, numerous blast beats and riffs much more influenced by death metal than on later works. The production is a lot less polished too, and there are no electronic influences or samples to be found.

The album is certainly a grower and will get better with each listen. If at first the tracks seem a little samey through out, or if you aren’t used to this band playing this style, it gets better with repeat listening.

It has been said that the band are very sloppy and that the drumming is poor but all these comments I feel are more suited to the live environment than in the studio.

One further reason to dislike this album would be the angry, anti-female lyrics and large number of spiteful breakup songs which may be off putting for many. I find I can just ignore the lyrics when the vocal patterns and delivery are good, so don’t have as much of a problem with this as some.

Of course, some people will hate Bring Me The Horizon no matter what, they seem to be one generation’s band that are cool to hate, but for those who are willing to be open minded, this album is worth checking out.

I find this to be an enjoyable album, and listen to it fairly regularly. For me, it isn’t the best album in the world but is far from the car crash I’ve heard it is made out to be. Perhaps a ‘try before you buy,’ album, but if you like the band I definitely recommend that you at least try.

DeathOfSeasons Bring Me the Horizon, along with Job for a Cowboy and Suicide Silence, were the leaders of the Deathcore scene. Having formed in 2004, they quickly released their debut EP, "This is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For" in the same year of their formation. Two years later they released "Count Your Blessings", a more Deathcore styled release than the mostly Metalcore sound of their debut EP. Following the release of Count Your Blessings Bring Me the Horizon quickly gained a rapidly expanding fanbase. No band in the Deathcore scene were bigger than they were. However, then they released "Suicide Season".

Suicide Season is quite a big departure from Count Your Blessings. First of all, the whole Deathcore sound has been thrown away and they are now an incredibly mainstream Metalcore band. I'm not sure what inspired the change in sound. I don't know whether Bring Me the Horizon grew bored of the Deathcore scene and wanted to change things with a new, improved sound or if they sold out for the $$$. Though I can tell you this: If they did it for the former then they failed. Big time.

Like I've already said, this album is very mainstream. From the vocals to the general heaviness of the record, everything has been toned down. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised to hear tracks from this album on commercial radio. Most songs here are quite catchy and very accessible, perfect for someone looking to get into Metal music. However, this album also sounds dumbed down. Sure, they have somewhat experimented with electronic effects ("Chelsea Smile" for example) and guest vocalists ("Football Season Is Over") but this album is really quite simple.

Let's start with the vocals. Oliver Sykes was never a good vocalist, and it is more obvious on this album than ever before. More or less abandoning his growls for some terrible hybrid of screaming and talking, it was a bad decision. His vocals sound like some angry pissed off riot guy yelling at the government for screwing him over in workplace choices. He's at his worst on "Chelsea Smile" where his vocals (especially during the opening of the song) sound more like rhythmic speaking than singing. He manages to sound pretty pissed off on tracks such as "No Need for Introductions, I've Read About Girls Like You on the Back of Toilet Doors", but it comes at the expense of sounding like he's trying too hard.

The riffs here are quite catchy. Sounding quite simple yet bouncy, it's hard to get the riffs found in "Chelsea Smile" and "It Was Written in Blood" out of your head. However, that's not to say they're good. Almost all of them sound the same, and you could swap one with the other and not really take any notice. They do their job decently enough, but when you listen to other Metalcore bands such as Bleeding Through and Parkway Drive you can't help but feel disappointed with what Bring Me the Horizon have done.

The drumming, well it's nothing great. Pretty standard really. They more or less play along with the guitars and don't really achieve anything interesting. Also, they have the horrible triggered Metalcore sound to them which is really distracting. It just sounds so mechanical. While that sound can work well in bands such as The Amenta, it just sounds horrible here.

I don't even know where to begin with the lyrics. They're everything that is bad about Metalcore. Coming across as ridiculously cheesy and stupid, I strongly recommend you avoid reading them. It's as if Oli is trying to be deep and meaningful, but crap like "We will never sleep 'cos sleep is for the weak" and "We stare at broken clocks, the hands don't turn anymore" is just downright embarrassing. And I won't even bring up the lyrics to "Sleep With One Eye Open", which contains lyrics that would even make I Killed the Prom Queen cringe.

Honestly, there is very little to like in this album. Almost everything here has been done better elsewhere. The vocals are horrible, the guitar work and drumming is average and the songs themselves aren't even memorable. Whether it's the fast paced "No Need for Introductions, I've Read About Girls Like You on the Back of Toilet Doors" or mainstream radio fodder of "Suicide Season", everything here is completely forgettable.

Download: The Comedown

For fans of: Anime Fire, Still Remains

(Originally written for Rate Your Music)

DeathOfSeasons Obviously all bands need to start somewhere, and the majority of the time their first release isn't all that good, but there are some cases where you just can't work out what anyone could possibly see in a release, and if you ask me This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For is definitely one of those cases. While I could easily name hundreds of things wrong with this album off the top of my head, I don't think I could name a single positive. I might be able to name a few inoffensive things about this album, but nothing good. At least Suicide Season had a few so bad it's good moments (Chelsea Smile anyone?) but this is just horrible.

This Is What the Edge... starts off with "RE: They Had No Reflections". You're greeted with a tonne of pinch harmonics and a spiralling riff played over a breakdown, followed by yet another breakdown only for the spiralling riff to return for a second outing. Oh, and all this happens in the first thirty seconds. So seeing as they'd used two breakdowns already despite the fact we're less than one tenth into the song you'd think we Bring Me the Horizon could wait a bit before busting out another of those infamous chug-chug moments. Well we do get some primal Slaughter of the Soul worship for a solid twenty seconds only to get hit with another breakdown. Then after some more random dicking around with what Bring Me the Horizon would consider pointless riffs, we get greeted with....radio frequencies? Really? All of "RE: They Had No Reflections" is a waste, as the song repeats the same riff and breakdown at least a dozen times over the close to six minute run time of this song. It's generally thought that if you don't have enough material for six minute then you do not write a song that long, though Bring Me the Horizon seem to have missed that lesson.

Things only get worse as the album goes on. "Who Wants Flowers When They're Dead? Nobody" is more or less the first song but with some poorly down gang vocals and Oli using his Suicide Season styled vocals. "Rawwwwrr!!" takes the worst of the opening two tracks and adds in twice as much pinch harmonic whoring. Though the worst is saved for last with "Traitors Never Play Hangman", which is identical to "RE: They Had No Reflections" except for the outro which consists of Sykes screaming nonsense. Fun.

If I had to pick what the biggest problem with album is it wouldn't be the completely stock standard drumming, the incredibly dull riffs or the breakdowns that occur every thirty seconds. No, it would be the vocals. Oli Sykes claims to have learnt how to sing entirely by singing along to records in his room, and it shows. I have never before heard such weak screaming. If I had to compare it to something it would be that of a ten year old girl who just stubbed her toe. He really has not a single bit of power. Then you have his growls, which I would compare to that of a novice vocalist with a throat infection. Though his hardcore shouts really do take out the award of being worst on show. Not only does he not seem to be able to decide whether to scream or shout, he also does so with so little care. If this were a televised situation you can be sure he'd be standing there reading all his lines off a cue card while eyeing the clock, just waiting to go home.

So there is not a single redeeming thing on this album. The only pros are that the songs get shorter as they go on and that they didn't include the fifth track that was originally meant to appear. Terrible even by Bring Me the Horizon's standards, out of all the albums released in 2004 this is the one that deserves to be forgotten.

Download: Declaration by Bleeding Through

For fans of: Architects, Antagonist A.D.

(Originally written for Rate Your Music)