Being quite naive I hoped that Bullet For My Valentine will some time release something like “Scream! Aim! Fire!” which I heard in 2008 and bought their album immediately. Or something that hits your immature teenage emotions the same way as “Tears Don’t Fall”. But that didn’t happen. Not with Venom in 2015 and not now with Gravity.
Needless to say that people getting older and their views are changing with years. And things that delighted you in 20 unlikely will joy you when you are 35. This is also Bullet For My Valentine‘s attitude: in the age of 38 (an age of frontman Matt Tuck) he will unlikely write the same music that he wrote when he was 23, when the band just started. And the music changed, indeed. But it can’t be said that for better.
Ok, Matt said that he passed through painful break-up, got some issues with anxiety, depression and Gravity will be about that. “It’s showing a very different side to me that I’ve never shown before. It’s [a] very vulnerable, tender and up-and-down version of me. It wasn’t something that I intended to do, but the more I was doing it, the better the songs started to become. The more tortured I’ve been, the better this album has become. Such a cliché! [Laughs] But it is my favorite BULLET record.”
Well, an album is very emotional, but these emotions or rather their expression is second-rate. Let me explain: here those transmitted emotions don’t cause compassion, sadness or anger, but a question “where did I heard it already?”. And then comes an answer: 17 years ago in Linkin Park‘s Hybrid Theory, Hoobastank‘s self-titled album and many other Alternative Metal bands. Seems like musicians listened to early 2000 Alternative, imbued with it and decided to play the same in BFMV style.
For the great justice it needs to be said that there is also some -core in an album: aggression, broken rhythms and other stuff inherent to the genre. But it sounds uniformly and quite dismally. Big number of electronic samples also doesn’t add an interest for the music. All of this doesn’t cause listen even one song for the second time.
Well, there are some good things in an album also: it’s a good work from drummer Jason Bowld, which joined the band not so long ago and quality of the record. But it doesn’t save an album from its explicit weakness.
Gravity will be released on June, 29 via Search And Destroy/Spinefarm Records.
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