In a recent Rolling Stone interview, songwriter and keyboardist for Bring Me The Horizon, Jordan Fish, stated his affinity for pop music melodies; this aspect is certainly integral to "That's The Spirit," the third full-length release from the typically metal English five-piece produced both by Fish and the band's singer, Oli Sykes.
“We still like some heavy music, but I also like Justin Bieber," Fish said. "My wife told me the other day I have the music taste of a teenage girl."
He'd be one hardcore teenage girl. "That's The Spirit" features plenty of screaming, breakdowns, electronics and BMTH's signature juvenile lyrical obsession with suicide, while still letting distortion wash over the mix. Synthesizer melodies and occasional string sections provide some subtly embedded comfort among the shouting aggression.
One lyrical low point from the track “Drown” reads, “What doesn’t kill you, makes you wish you were dead. Got a hole in my soul growing deeper and deeper.”
The lyrics crafted by Sykes rely on vague personal despair with screaming interjections that either berate or plead for help. It portrays an individual in a constant state of desperation and loneliness, while the lyrics simultaneously ask the audience to sing along or bang their head to the maximalist instrumentation.
Shouts, yells, howls, wails, and what might be referred to as "Cookie Monster noises" have all appeared in recorded music from James Brown to Cannibal Corpse, but the type of screams used by BMTH defy comparison those most listeners would be familiar with today.
BMTH is bereft of the desperate idealism of a Fugazi-type band or the fury of Rage Against the Machine. The incessant screaming on "That's The Spirit" asks the listener to shout along in search of some sort of catharsis without ever defining the anguish that the screaming alludes to throughout the album.
On “Happy Song,” Sykes despairs over “going around in circles." I couldn’t agree with him more about that, but it's the refrain where he tips his hand and lets the audience in on his vision for the album, saying, “We’re all f---ed in the head, alone and depressed, but if we sing along, a little f---ing louder to a happy song maybe we’ll forget.” The problem is that we are never told in clear terms just what we should forget.
Some tracks are reasonably danceable with club worthy beats and catchy synthesizers on tracks like album opener “Doomed,” but with the constant breakdowns and screaming, one assumes that any dancing would quickly devolve into moshing.
For those in search of painfully irony free scream-fest, "That's The Spirit" may be the high-energy, end of summer, pop-metal album you need to energize your brooding. For a band so lyrically obsessed with suicide, BMTH have proven their ability to survive and maintain an audience over a twelve-year career in the metal genre — a feat not easily achieved in this style of music.
Maybe these songs would be more compelling in a live setting. But for now, the band has certainly tried to create the feeling of being drowned in communal shouting on "That's The Spirit."
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Reach the reporter at malaridw@asu.edu, or on Twitter @Marco_Alarid
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