Monday 12 October 2015

Album per day: Day 21

Artist: Bring Me The Horizon
Album: That's The Spirit
Released: 2015

My relationship with Bring Me The Horizon goes back a long way. I remember spotting them in an old issue of Kerrang! Magazine, and thinking "what the fuck do they look like?!". I then heard Diamonds Aren't Forever, and thus dubbed them "metal for pussies", because you see, I was such a testosterone-fuelled jock back then... Nowadays the quintet from Sheffield are more civilised and, having outgrown their old style of angsty deathcore, they have left behind the days of being bottled off stage when supporting Machine Head or Killswitch Engage, and have now swapped it all to be festival headliners-in-waiting. They have set about becoming the UK's answer to Linkin Park. This year, they released their fifth studio album entitled That's The Spirit, which displays even more of a shift in dynamic. The transition over their last three records nowadays favours a more diversified, mainstream rock sound, with frontman Oli Sykes industrially cleaning his vocal cords with some sort of toilet brush.
Now, the opener, Doomed... Doomed starts with what sounds like two people engaged in what can only be described as "the dance with no pants". It starts off a bit Imagine Dragons, but once it builds, it sounds like something that could come straight off of Linkin Park's album Minutes To Midnight. I heard Happy Song the day it came out, and I still think it's a fucking monster. Clearly inspired by American metal along the lines of Deftones, the riff in this is just what I was looking for. It's the kind of progression that I am very happy to hear from BMTH, and Oli even manages to scream a little. Throne had also been released to the masses before the album release, and it has everything the band could want from a single; a mix of clean and gritty vocals, looped synths and a powerful rhythm section. True Friends picks up where Happy Song left off, but doesn't quite display the same energy. Oli's lyrics seem heartfelt though and the way he shouts his way through the verses could be a hint at his personal experiences.
Follow You begins and wait, have I just shuffled to Blank Space by Taylor Swift? Oh wait, of course not, I'm listening on Spotify! The song's smooth, ambient tones fill me with a lot of questions. How desperate are these guys to shake off their early noise? Based on this effort, the answer is rather. What You Need may as well be a You Me At Six song (not a bad thing); maybe Oli really enjoyed working with them on Bite My Tongue. It's just one of many sounds that the group have taken inspiration from on the album. The chorus smashes it, mind. As That's The Spirit plays on, you begin to understand just how much of a change keyboardist Jordan Fish has brought to proceedings since he joined the band before the release of Sempiternal. Avalanche's orchestral synths over detuned guitars are becoming a little predictable, but it's usually a winning formula for their new style of anthems.
Run is nothing like it's Snow Patrol namesake. The only similarity is the quiet-loud-quiet-loud dynamics between verses and chorus. Here is another one that could have been a Chester Bennington brainchild. NEW Drown? Spotify, what ever could you mean? I warmed to this song very quickly after it was released, after some initial scepticism about what this meant for their future direction, and bar a couple of added guitar reverbs and piano keys, it's the same beast it was when it was released in time for their Wembley Arena show last year. A dark Blasphemy, with its bluesy guitar solo and infectious chorus, becomes a truly standout moment for me in this record. Culminating in Oh No, the longest track on the album, it is tailored to feature on Made In Chelsea at some point, playing over multiple shots of posh, Instagram-filtered London. Perhaps more akin to Two Door Cinema Club than Bring Me The Horizon, you can just picture Oh No playing soundtrack to a small room full of teenagers jumping and smiling whilst colourful balloons fall from the ceiling. A strange, yet brave finale.
Seeing BMTH at Reading Festival 2013 shone a whole new light on them for me. I was adamant that they were going to be crap, but that gig changed my opinion completely. They smashed it, tore it up, threw it away, and then smashed it some more; they blew my fucking head off. Now I regularly keep up to date with them, and from time to time dig into their back catalogue. How does That's The Spirit rank? I'd imagine that there are A LOT of furious fans from the Count Your Blessings/Suicide Season era who have watched their idols sell their souls for a shot at commercial success. I'm okay with this though, it's a good change. This album has had to follow Sempiternal, one of my favourite records of the last few years, and it matches up to it most of the time, save for a few repetitive song formulas. The mind can only wander as to how much more experimental BMTH will go for album number six.

Rating: 8/10
Recommended songs: Happy Song, Drown, Blasphemy

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