That's The Spirit by Bring Me The Horizon

One of the faces of metalcore over the last decade, British metal band Bring Me the Horizon have compiled a discography 4 full length albums in their career, all of which cracked the top 100 charts in the UK. For the most part however, I've found their music to be rather basic and generic. It wasn't until their fourth album, Sempiternal that the band delivered a project that proved to me that they do have some potential to be more than just your run of the mill metalcore act. That's largely due to the band's continued experimentation with electronic elements that gave an added dimension to a genre that often times can feel very one dimensional, at least on the mainstream level.

Going into the release of their newest album That's The Spirit, I was fairly excited to see what kind of progress Oliver Sykes and co. were going to make, and if they could actually win me over with an album that actually felt as if the band were passionate about the music that they made. Instead of that however, the singles released before the album Drown, Happy Song, and Throne, made it evident that the band was headed in a very different direction than that of their previous output. While the electronic elements remained in their sound, any previous elements of the metalcore genre, or metal for that matter, were left in the past. Instead, on their latest release Bring Me the Horizon ditch the screaming vocals, hardcore guitar riffs, and booming drums, in favor of a much more radio friendly rock sound. While the electronic elements, like the use of a synthesizer remained, that was really the only element that carried over, aside from Oliver Sykes subpar song writing ability. 

Let me just say, there is nothing wrong with bands making big transitions in their sound, and in a lot of cases (Radiohead's Kid A, The Velvet Underground & Nico's eponymous album, and even more recently, Kanye West's Yeezus) a transition can lead to a band/artist putting out some of their best material. However, as far as Bring Me the Horizon's 180 turn in musical direction goes, it does absolutely nothing for me. Sonically, the band sounds different of course, but the same reasons why I couldn't get into the band before remain. The guitar riffs are recycled and often times boring, the vocals are also boring and frankly, the lyrics are even worse. Not to mention how lame the background chanting in tracks like True Friends are now that they've lost all of their previous edge. On the note of lyrics, I can't count how many times I found myself shaking my head at the lyrics on this project, the previously mentioned True Friends is a perfect example of that, as on the track Oliver Sykes sings the incredibly childish chorus of "true friends' stab you in the front." I'm not saying that the band has ever been poetic by any stretch, but they could at least get away with it when the lyrics were being screamed with a little bit of passion, on a rock song however, lyrics that sound as if they were written by a 12 year old just aren't going to fly.  

In all honesty, it's hard for me to pick out any positives on the band's newest release. It really sounds as if the band is going for a lighter, less entertaining version of what they were doing on their their first few albums. As tired as I am of the typical metalcore sound of hardcore verses that are met with cleanly sang choruses that see the vocals soar over the rest of the instruments in the most corny of fashions, this album is not much more entertaining than that. Part of me really wants to like this album, because I do think that the band has much more potential than just playing to crowds of teenage girls and selling t-shirts at Hot Topics. With that being said, if they're ever going to reach that potential, they're going to need to progress and mature, instead of doing whatever it is they did to create this disappointment. 

Rating: D

Favorite Tracks: What You Need, Drown

Least Favorite Tracks: Happy Song, Throne, True Friends, Avalanche, Run, Blasphemy