Bring Me the Horizon - Is the Stigma Necessary?

        

          I'm going to be upfront and say this: I actually really like Bring Me the Horizon. They're juvenile, yes, and not meant to be taken too seriously, but I'm damned if I don't get pumped by listening to them. Depending on who you talk to in the metal/hardcore scene, however, most people will dismiss them contemptuously with anything from 'all their songs sound the same' to 'poser scene girl music' to 'pussy emo f@%^&'. It's safe to say that they're among the most polarized bands of the twenty-first century, and even though their fifteen minutes of fame may be nearing its end, they're nevertheless present in the metal consciousness to this day. Have they been influential? Without a doubt. Do they deserve the undiluted hatred they face from most of the music community? That's a harder question to answer.

           To attempt to answer this question, I dove headfirst into BMTH's complete discography, starting from their first EP, This is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For. As someone who got into them only a few years ago, and who'd only really heard their 2010 release There is a Hell, Believe Me, I've Seen It, There is a Heaven, Let's Keep it a Secret (Christ but that's a long name), Edge of Your Seat was a tour de force that showed me the Sheffield quartet's humble origins as nothing even closely resembling a post-hardcore band, but as something closer to the deathcore sound you'd hear today from Chelsea Grin. Breakdowns abound, clean vocals are a myth, and Oliver Sykes' punishing growls are matched by his shrieking highs.

            This was interesting. Deathcore, I knew, originated in the mid-90s primarily in the western United States, with bands like Suffocation leading the charge. But what really caused the deathcore explosion was Arizona's Job for a Cowboy achieving mainstream (well, as mainstream as you can get with screaming) success. The brutal amalgamation of death metal and hardcore punk rapidly became one of the defining 'extreme' movements of the 2000s, similar to how Scandinavian extreme metal bands such as Gorgoroth and Amon Amarth shocked the general public in the 90s.

          The most fascinating thing, however, was that before BMTH, there had been slim to no British deathcore bands. This may very well be because Edge of Your Seat was released in 2005, during the nascent years of the deathcore genre, but even so, the British deathcore scene remains sparse, with BMTH being one of the genre's few holdouts on the other side of the pond.

             The brutal, in-your-face sound of Edge of Your Seat, did, however, have a few drawbacks to it once I got over the general shock of thinking 'Well. These guys made “Blessed with a Curse”.'. The EP, simply enough, was phenomenally repetitive. With few exceptions, the pattern of 'chug chug chug SMALL BREAKDOWN chug chug chug' remained unbroken through all four songs, with only slight variations in time signature. In a genre where it's very easy to have all your music sound the same (Whitechapel, cough cough), this was a trap BMTH unfortunately fell into. Is it forgiveable? Yes. This was the band's first foray into music and their bravery at exploring a completely new genre ought to be praised.

              BMTH's followup album, Count Your Blessings, was an improvement on Edge of Your Seat's shortcomings. Stylistically, the band remained rooted in deathcore, but small differences here and there began to show that the band was not afraid to alter its sound. Breakdowns became more interesting, incorporating squealies and slowly ramping up in intensity. Sporadic melodic breaks (the end of 'Tell Slater not to Wash his Dick') and solos ('Liquor and Love Lost') gave the album a different feel - it felt like the guitarwork began incorporating notes above fret 2. The band toyed with rhythm and wrote a handful of very fun riffs. Possibly the most shocking thing was the short (under two-minute) acoustic break on '15 Fathoms and Counting'. Writing this on a bus from Boston to Philadelphia, this woke me up and I had to check to make sure I was still listening to BMTH.

             With Count Your Blessings, BMTH made clear a very important fact: Bring Me the Horizon is not a band with one defining sound - the band's one defining feature is its complete and utter lack of subtlety. Lyrically, instrumentally, aesthetically, the band has no qualms with saying 'We are a metal band. This is our sound. Deal with it.' It was this damned-if-I-care attitude that drew so many fans in. Metal and punk are, at their core, rebellions. The way we dress, the way we behave, the way we view the world, make us so much different than any other kind of music listener.

There was just one problem: the unrestrained brutality and violence of Count Your Blessings and Edge of Your Seat became an expectation from most of the band's listeners – after all, if it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? That, in and of itself, was the diametric opposite of what the band wanted. 

             And that's why shit really hit the fan with 2008's Suicide Season. Even in the first few seconds of the introductory song 'The Comedown', an electro wobble disrupts the splintering breakdown. The song progresses, and it's clear that the style has been renovated completely. Oliver Sykes' screams are far less frequent – he's adopted a throaty, harsh yell for the verses, reserving his signature growls and screams for breakdowns and choruses. The melodic breaks are gone – we get ambient effects and a lot of the chug that was present on Edge of Your Seat. But, with four more years of experience, the band finds ways of preventing this from getting old, while bringing in new features that dumbfounded listeners completely.

             One of deathcore's defining characteristics, which it adopted from its death metal origins, was an INSANE drum track that keeps the intensity at an all-time high. In Suicide Season, this has been abandoned. The drums are slower and far more rhythmic. It's not as obvious there's a double-kick as it was in Count Your Blessings and before. While deathcore fans exclaimed in disgust at this 'sell-out' move, it was undeniable that the songs became intrinsically more catchy. Listen to 'Chelsea Smile' and I guarantee you'll be singing 'I've got a secret...' for the rest of the day.

Just as well, the band's suddenly healthy use of electronic effects makes Suicide Season a refreshing and (for me, at least) more fun experience. Using electronic effects to hype up a breakdown make it pleasant because you're not expecting it, and I can only imagine how it is live.

             While it's true that the electronic elements detract from the instrumental prowess of the band members, it fundamentally pushes BMTH in the post-hardcore direction. The same complete and utter lack of subtlety still blows strong, but this is an interesting move, since post-hardcore and deathcore fans are, in most cases, mutually exclusive (Compare Dance Gavin Dance with the Acacia Strain. Different, eh?). Did the band expect to lose a healthy chunk of its fanbase? That's unavoidable with any record, but BMTH's biggest mistake with Suicide Season was threefold: firstly, they chose to alienate some of the most hard-to-please and foulmouthed people in the metal scene; secondly, the entire album shows a lyrical shift in a far more negative direction; and thirdly, the band didn't change its sound enough to appease the post-hardcore and metalcore crowd, but enough to anger its old favorites.

              Lyrically, BMTH preserved deathcore's penchant for relentless lyrical fury in Count Your Blessings and Edge of Your Seat. The lyrics were violent, brutal, and, when backed by Sykes' screaming, almost therapeutic in their anger. Suicide Season, however, took on a far more depressing tone lyrically, as Oliver Sykes came out of a bout of serious depression during writing (which would persist into 2010's release of There is a Hell...). There is one song about self-empowerment, which, ironically enough, sounds the most similar to BMTH's earlier material. However, the majority of the songs show a fixation on death and unrequited love. This spontaneous 'emo' move, coupled with an unfortunate interest MTV took in the band during this time, cemented BMTH in Count Your Blessings fans' eyes as posers and sellouts. Simply put: they felt betrayed.

               The final and most grievous mistake was the degree to which they changed their sound. Simply put, BMTH's current sound is too simplistic to qualify as good metalcore, but too soft to remain quality deathcore. And that is why Suicide Season transformed BMTH into an incredibly polarized band – people who sympathized with Sykes' depression viewed Suicide Season as a reflection, and became unerringly loyal to it. On the other hand, ex-fans and newcomers alike were put off by the band's sound, and labels began to fly.

                But I've forgotten the original goal of writing this long-winded post: is the stigma against BMTH justified? Well, the stigma appeared primarily in response to the drastic stylistic change between Count Your Blessings and Suicide Season, as BMTH suddenly found themselves with no common genre to be a part of. Fusion bands will always get a bad rep from purists, who believe that every band should belong to one genre and one alone, but I see this way of thinking as close-minded – if band X belongs to genre Y, and thus must have characteristics A, B, C, then what's the difference between any two bands in genre Y?

                Music today doesn't reward innovation enough – we expect artists to find what they're good at, and god forbid they try anything else. BMTH is a prime example of this – while they're far from a 'perfect' band, they have their own style. And because BMTH floats between genres, purists too set in their ways hear them as an example of anything and think 'they suck' because, fundamentally, Bring Me the Horizon don't really belong to any genre.

               That's my two cents on the matter. If you disagree and decide to flame me, good for you. You must be so proud of yourself.