REVIEW: Bring Me The Horizon – ‘Sempiternal’

ARTIST: Bring Me The Horizon
ALBUM: Sempiternal
LABEL: Epitaph Records
GENRE: Metalcore

You want your favorite bands to succeed. That’s the dream right? Find something your passionate about and make a career out of it. Change lives, touch people’s hearts and make a difference. Sometimes those same people will turn on a band once they become too successful though. Over the years the band has changed and developed their sound and become mature musicians but the fans don’t necessarily want that, they want the same guys they met in an alley at a $5 show years ago when no one knew who that band was.

Bring Me The Horizon is that band for a lot of people. I remember the first time I saw them I didn’t know who they were and they were one of the opening bands for The Fall Of Troy at a small venue in Boise, Idaho. Since their inception their popularity has skyrocketed, leading to harsh criticism from those who used to call themselves fans. There are many fans who think they sold out after Count Your Blessings and don’t like what the band has produced since then. Lucky for me I never really liked Count Your Blessings all that much so Suicide Season was a welcomed surprise. So was There Is A Hell…

The band’s sound has changed significantly over the years, this is immediately apparent in the first track on the album, “Can You Feel My Heart”, when Oli actually sings clean vocals instead of just screams/yelling. While this is the first time this is done in the band’s musical career, this won’t be the let time you will hear the clean vocals on the album. The band also experiments with some more electronic elements in this track as well, which between this and the chorus make this one of the most memorable tracks on the album.

While not all of the tracks are memorable there are a few that are worth making note of. “Sleepwalking” would easily be one of those tracks. The lyrics are personal, relatable and catchy. It has a little bit of a different sound than the rest of the album, and is a bit slower paced. It actually has a little bit more of a rock feel than anything – aside from Oli’s trademark harsh yelling vocals. Don’t get me wrong though, while I’m not sure I would actually call this album metalcore it’s definitely not a rock album.

“Shadow Moses” was the band’s first single for the album. Oli proves that has found his niche by consistently writing catchy anthem-like choruses that can’t help but sung along with (Songs like “Diamonds Aren’t Forever” and “Crucify Me”). This song is slightly heavier than most of the other tracks, which is a nice change of pace around the middle of the album.

If you are the religious type you might not be a fan of some of the songs, especially “The House Of Wolves”. These are the personal beliefs of the vocalist though, and most likely the beliefs of many of the band’s fans so if you are easily offended by religion-related lyrics it might be best to skip those particular tracks. Or just skip the band all together.

It’s obvious these guys put so much of themselves in their music, and it’s proving to be the best thing for them as a band to continue on the path they’ve taken to date. Aside from experimenting more with sounds and vocal styles it’s difficult to imagine what these guys could possibly create for a future album. We’ll just have to wait a few years and find out, but this album by far is their best and if they ended their careers tomorrow they could rest assured they had a solid music career worth talking about for years to come.

SCORE: 9/10
Review written by: Kriston McConnell

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