By Bill Adams
Ever been totally shocked by an album that you figured you had pegged on name recognition alone? It’s dangerous to make assumptions like that and the most recent proof of that fact is the coolest thing about Bring Me The Horizon‘s third album.
The first minute and fifty-six seconds or so of the album’s opening song, “Crucify Me,” are exactly what every fan AND detractor expects; screamer Oli Sykes sounds as though he has already come unhinged from the moment he hits the ground in the song and programmer/bellower Jona Weinhoten sounds abusive in his closer-to-baritone assault. The guitars buzz with frenetic urgency and match the terrifying speed of the drums. This is what those fans who were won over by both Suicide Season and Count Your Blessings laid their money down for, and they are repaid instantly and in kind.
After that first minute and fifty-six seconds though, you can ACTUALLY hear Bring Me The Horizon implode. That’s not an overstatement; the band literally turns “Crucify Me” inside out right before listeners’ ears and that’s when EVERYONE starts paying attention. After that first minute-and-fifty-six second rave-up, Bring Me The Horizon throws every new-fangled, Top 40 AND gothic digital effect into the mix and, astoundingly, it makes for a most profound musical epiphany; there is nothing like it in popular music of any kind right now, and it’s truly exhilarating and disquieting to hear (the proof of that lies in the fact that Amazon has included this disclaimer on its’ site with the disc: “Please note: The first track “Crucify Me” on the new Bring Me The Horizon album, There Is A Hell, Believe Me…, contains digital effects within the song that are fully intentional. This is not a defect.”) and completely unlike ANYTHING one would expect from an aggressive rock band. Suddenly those bizarre vocal clipping effects typically used to make the voices of everyone from Cher to Britney Spears sound like hiccupping androids turn sinister and vile when they approach Sykes’ desperate shriek and the guitars seem to reach through headphones and physically maul eardrums – it’s just remarkable.
That staggering moment two minutes into “Crucify Me” is largely a one-off gimmick (it’s not like it happens on every song on There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let’s Keep It A Secret or anything), but it is enough to totally reshape the listening experience for anyone within earshot.
(Epitaph)
Bill Adams is the editor-in-chief of groundcontrolmag.com
