Bring Me The Horizon - 'There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It'

Disappointing mish-mosh of styles without a clear musical identity.

Bring Me The Horizon? A better band name might be Bring Me The Earplugs. Their new album has a labyrinthine title: There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret. It’s propelled by a truckload of energy, but hampered by indecision, juvenile lyrics and parts of songs that either tank outright or sound corny.

It’s hard to know what Bring Me The Horizon was thinking when writing this album. Plenty of time was spent finding interesting ways to pad songs but little time was spent on writing good hooks or memorable lyrics. Not only did they throw in the kitchen sink they threw in the entire house. It’s the musical equivalent of Hurricane Katrina:  classical interludes, metalcore breakdowns and borderline emo vocals fight for space.  Musical wreckage washes up on the shore.

When you think an actual song is about to rise from the chaos you’ll get a female chorus. Then another overdubbed female chorus. There are plenty of female choruses here. It’s like being surrounded by a pissed off band of harpies with Casio keyboards.  There’s even a moment near the end of “Crucify Me” that sounds like Jewel visited the studio to add an acoustic interlude.

It’s tough to know what to think about this album because it essentially lacks identity. If you were to ask me what Bring Me To The Horizon sounded liked I couldn’t tell you, because it’s evident that outside of the generic term metalcore they don’t know who they want to be.

There Is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let's Keep It a Secret is like a mix of Theatre Of Pain-era Motley Crue and Suicide Silence. There are plenty of tattoos and groupies but far too few memorable songs. There is better music out there. Believe me, I’ve heard it.

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