Bring Me the Horizon — amo ANALYSIS & REVIEW
Published 02/12/2019
Forget what this band has done in the past. Forget about your expectations. None of that helps with musical opinion, it only clouds your judgement. I urge you to take this in as simply an album meant to be listened to, and… lo and behold, you’ll probably end up with the same conclusion as those who heavily take preconceptions into account. This album sucks. It’s not because the band decided to do something wildly different, it’s because they failed to find worthy ideas while tying themselves down to a pointless, lackluster modern style.
It’s as if they listened to all of the garbage mainstream pop rock albums of the last five years and said “yeah, let’s see if we can replicate this”. Not to make the explanation sound so generic, but I think you know what I mean when I say that competent musicians should know garbage when they see it. Bring Me the Horizon fell flat on their face by not being able to weed out some crucial detrimental elements that make modern pop rock so terrible.
The surprising and unfortunate thing about this is, this album wasn’t produced in the artless, big money-churning factory. These musicians weren’t blinded by the industry; they knew what they were doing. I could talk all day about how big business is ruining popular music, but this album isn’t too big or popular. This was a matter of being influenced by all the wrong things.
It’s not as if the entire work was a total disaster, or that it stooped to the very same level as other contemporary failures. This wasn’t done in a completely artless vacuum; there were still some signs of life, however it was only in the harmonic progressions from time to time. The opening few songs, especially “nihilist blues” and “wonderful life”, had some decent metric variety, rhythmically driven motives, and divergence from the annoying three chord pastiche.
Nothing that ever sparked any sort of excitement lasted too long, though. Sure, rhythmic delivery of the harmonic layer from the guitar was the one consistent thing I could live with as a listener. However, everything including that small positive was always muddled by uninspiring vocal melodies and synthesizer harassment. The music was trying to get me to dance, to rage, and to reflect at the same time. It turned into a heap of boring nonsense before too long.
The wheels fell off in the second half of the work. Rhythmic delivery was no longer featured, and a hodgepodge of annoyance in bland vocal lines, lame attempts at energy builds, and uninteresting sonic embellishments took over to make this work sound just like a short shelf life money grabber. A lot of the songwriting honestly felt automated and algorithmic, with no purpose but to try and replicate a sound that most music lovers despise. It was ripe with cheapness in just about every aspect.
It’s rather embarrassing to see musicians with no contractual obligation to sound basic and empty-hearted, sound so basic and empty-hearted. They aren’t the worse musicians you’ll ever find; they at least replicated this style with a sense of flair and harmonic understanding. But there’s nothing of worth that came out of it. Don’t listen to this. And don’t hate it because it’s not what you expected, hate it because it’s bad.
