Bullet For My Valentine

The Poison

Written by: PP on 08/10/2005 03:44:50

Welsh metalcore act Bullet For My Valentine's debut album "The Poison" has been one of the most anticipated releases in the UK this year, after they exploded into the spotlight of the British media with their phenomenal EP "Hand Of Blood" last year. They've been hailed as the next Lostprophets, but in reality they're much, much better than that.

The band has elected to use a classic (almost forgotten) album structure: It starts with a soft inductive buildup, breaks down to a few awesome, screamed out loud, riff driven songs to catch the attention of the listener, in order to include a couple of softies in the middle. Of course, inserting four soft songs in a row would be a mistake too obvious to make, so they've inserted one or two hardcore ones before presenting the rest of the soft ones. This is summed up by the longest song on the album, which compresses all previous songs into a single brilliant masterpiece.

And so the album commences with "Intro", a soft introduction featuring Apocalyptica's cellos and a single slow, dainty guitar, gradually building up into a Metallica-style ballad, with the volume increasing step by step, until it plunges into a System Of A Down "Bounce"-style riff and an insane scream of "Her Voice Resides", only to be shadowed by the usual complex melodic guitar lines we're used to from "Hand Of Blood EP".

"4 Words (To Choke Upon)" and "Suffocating Under Words Of Sorrow (What Can I Do)" continue on the same style as the EP, with alternating lines of screaming and singing, but it isn't until the superb, almost six minute long "Tears Don't Fall", that the band absolutely blows your mind. It has the most fetching chorus you'll have heard on a metalcore album, and the Megadeth-style solo isn't only scales up and down, its raw talent right there for all you doubters.

While the less harsh songs "Hit The Floor" and "All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)" aren't my favorites on the album, they are by no means bad songs. Fortunately, the band was smart enough not to have too many slow/soft songs in a row to break the flow, and "Room 409", another masterpiece, regains the possible loss of interest with its emotional "I loved you / you hurt me" screams.

"The End", the longest track on the album, sums up the record by including the whole arsenal of Bullet For My Valentine songs in one song: Slow, delicate introductions to songs, soft and sentimental lyrics & vocals, unexpected breakdowns, beautiful Metallica-style verse guitars, crunching & complex buildup guitars, and screamed out choruses, that allow the guitars to catch their breath after the melodic verses. The only part missing from "The End" is a mindblowing solo, but it is replaced by a fading out guitar outro, kind of a reverted version of "Intro".

Not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that Bullet For My Valentine would exceed themselves as much as they do with "The Poison". It's a mindblowing album, and a certain candidate for the album of the year award, worth a grade of nine and a half (if I could do that).

9

Download: Tears Don't Fall, The End
For the fans of: Trivium, Metallica

Release Date 03.10.2005
Visible Noise

Related Items | How we score?
Comments
comments powered by Disqus

Legal

© Copyright MMXXIV Rockfreaks.net.