 
Now here’s a band that has been with me
for many years now, I’ve always been very
vocal in regards to my opinions on each album
they’ve put out; starting with their self
titled mini album which I personally think is
some of the best material the band has ever produced,
“Poison” drastically shot them up
the ladder to success and rightly so as it was
a truly impressive selection of music, “Scream
Aim Fire” was on the rough end of the press
firing line receiving many bad reviews but I still
stood by it as there were some impressive moments
and the rest was decent, “Fever” their
most recent output was their return to strong
form as it was aggressive yet melodic, something
the band thrives with. We could have happily left
that story to conclude right there and it would
have been a rollercoaster career with a strong
finish, since the world didn’t end inevitably
they’re back with a new record and a confident
attitude or arrogant delusion, let’s find
out wish.
But before we get into the bulk, prior to its
release day we had the release of 2 singles. One
of which was “Riot” and this needless
to say was a strong shock to the system; for a
start Bullet For My Valentine have normally had
meaningful lyrics that just flow with the music
and usually stay away from clichés or really
simplistic cringe worthy lines but this is just
completely opposite and it’s awful; on the
note of being opposite it was hardly aggressive
either, found the whole thing quite poorly put
together and just plain dull. The other single,
the first single they released from the album
“Temper Temper” the purpose of which
is to create hype and aggressively push excitement
onto the fans; in all fairness this wasn’t
as bad as “Riot” but it was still
miles away from what they’ve built a career
out of in their back catalogue.
I need to stress how forced and cringe worthy
some of these lyrics are, “Breaking Point”
the opening song of the album had me physically
shivering and rubbing my face because of how shockingly
bad they were and “Truth Hurts” is
like some kind of Geordie Shore bullshit to do
with drink and drugs. Arguably the bands biggest
anthem was “Tears Don’t Fall”,
so to name a song “Tears Don’t Fall
Pt. 2” is definitely some form of attention
stunt to sell more copies, from what I can gather
from listening it is effectively the same song
with different lyrics; the riff is painfully similar,
the opening line “Let’s Go Again”
just being the same with 1 word added on the end.
The only good thing is that right here is a journalists
comparative dream, comparing the lyrics with the
previous they aren’t a touch on the original
and the whole structure isn’t even anything
like the band’s made a career out of, trust
me just listen to them both back to back.
I don’t know what it is that’s took
the very edge of what made the band who they were
away, is it the fact Matt has a new metal project
in Axewound and that’s where he focuses
his heavy side? Or is it the fact he’s cut
his hair? Are they bored of heavy music? I couldn’t
tell you what it is but I’ve seen moves
like this before from bands like Lost Prophets
with the transition they underwent between “The
Fake Sound of Progress” and “Liberation
Transmission” or what My Chemical Romance’s
“Danger Days” was all about, but they
still managed to find a degree of success with
their crossovers, BFMV I don’t think have
the same power with whatever this is.
2/5
Review by James Webb
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