Bring Me The Horizon - 'Sempiternal' Album Review

Apparently the other day someone tossed a leak of Bring Me The Horizon’s new album into the savage pit that is the internet.  I say apparently because I have no idea as I don’t give a damn about Bring Me The Horizon. I saw them a few years ago supporting Bullet For My Valentine at Wembley Arena where they were shocking, Oli threw a tantrum and they had the power pulled on them.

Also, apparently their new album, Sempiternal, has been bought forward to an April the 1^st release and you can now listen to the full album legally on SoundCloud. I wouldn’t know the original scheduled release date because I had no intention of reviewing this album until I found myself, today, with nothing better to do.  I’d heard some rumour about this album, though, that painted it in a very positive light. In the recent release of Metal Hammer, they heralded it as “an absolute juggernaut of an album” and several other fairly reputable sources have spoken of its new found depth and maturity, so when I got onto SoundCloud, I had relatively high expectations for the album (I hated what I heard of their last two) and hoped to perhaps maybe even have my opinion changed.

Nope.

 

From the word go the album failed to meet the expectations I had of it. The first tracks pretty much summarised the entire album. ‘Can You Feel My Heart’ is a composition of an annoying, relentlessly repeated synth riff with cuts in after an unbelievably weak vocals and drums section with some feedback and fuzzy stuff in the background. This then repeated. And again. And again. And again. There is little to no variation in the song, which originally led me to believe it might have been an intro track, until every other song on the album sounded just like it.

When the second track, ‘The House Of Wolves’ begins, the “matured” BMTH employ every tactic that every teenage-boy-scenester-pop-metal- hardcore-crap band have used in every one of their songs ever. Wild and violent, yet fabulously unimpressive guitars, angsty, blocky drums and screamy vocals going on about all kinds of overused cliché rubbish (this song used “brick by brick by brick” and something about “selling sins” and “saving souls”). The chorus is simple and involves an awful lot of chanting, be it the odd cliché or the song title. And then, just like that, it’s finished. The song repeats the same three-or-so sections, most of which were composed of a toned-down, bass-reduced drum-and-fuzz-and-screams section followed by the aforementioned hardcore-crap rapid chords. The song goes absolutely nowhere, there is next to no musical depth or variation.

Perhaps the next song, ‘Empire (Let Them Sing)’ will be different? No and no. Repeating open-string riffs, the same muted, drums-and-vocals-and-fuzz section, and a chanted chorus. Maybe the lyrics are presenting themselves as “matured” yet? No again, “moths to a flame”, “wolves at my door” and “writing on the walls” all feature lyrically. So far it is not looking good.

Two more medicore, copy-pasted songs play before the pre-released ‘Shadow Moses’ starts playing. Though I never listened to the song, some of my friends on Facebook have insisted on belting it across my news feed proclaiming it as “incredible”, “amazing” and a “brilliant new direction”. And, oh look? More muted sections, open string riffs and cliché lyrics about looking into someone’s eyes and living your life, yet also going nowhere. I have to admit though, the song has its energy, the occasional riff carries some weight and force, providing a splutter of enthusiasm to the album; but it’s impossible to escape the fact that this is still essentially the same song as all of its predecessors.

And so Sempiternal bumbles on. I made it to ‘Crooked Young’ and realised I hadn’t written anything new in my notes for quite a while, and that’s all the excuse I needed to stop listening. So I stopped. It’s undeniable that the album has a little oomph and perhaps a smidgen of energy, but it can’t escape the fact that every section, every song, every riff and idea may as well just be recycled from somewhere in another song. Sempiternal is incredibly dull and boring. I’d even say Sempiternal be a massive disappointment for a “trve” BMTH fan because with their attempt at maturity, the band has lost any fire they once possessed almost completely. What a huge disappointment. Still, it’s not quite as crap as BFMV’s Temper Temper.

On an unrelated subject, 'horizon' has stopped looking like a word.

 

Overall – 3.8/10