Bullet For My Valentine

Temper Temper

Written by: PP on 18/02/2013 23:21:42

"Dirty Little Secret" sums up nicely just about everything that's wrong with the fourth Bullet For My Valentine full-length "Temper Temper", and by extension with the band itself. If you've ever heard a track so marred with clichés it makes even the most objective critic cringe, it is this one. It's a sappy, melancholic ballad that's laden with nostalgia for better days, for the years long gone when BFMV were writing some of the best metalcore across the board on their EP and on their debut full-length. Now, this track feels but a tired joke with Matt Tuck's annoying emo croons on top of sleazy hard rock melodies that feel generic at best, terribly overused and unoriginal at worst. It's simply a track you cannot afford to write, let alone include on your full length album in 2013, because it sounds so tired, so dated, so bland in comparison to pretty much everything else that's out there.

That's essentially the core issue with "Temper Temper" all around: it feels dated. Partially because the songwriting is uninspired to say the least, but also because their emo-metalcore expression suffered a catastrophic heart failure in relevance about five or six years back. They try to compensate with outright sleaze hard rock style, but where sleaze gives some bands a rock'n'roll image, here it makes BFMV sound...well, if not disgusting, then at least an insurmountable challenge for a 2013 music fan to take seriously.

It's not outright terrible, however, as the title track and "Leech" demonstrate. The former packs a nice punch, featuring a quintessentially BFMV style aggressive, screamed chorus and then some groovy riffs, ensuring the track is probably among the better ones BFMV have written in recent years. The same goes for "Leech", but even here you have to admit that Matt Tuck's sleazy croon is irritable if for no other reason than because it sounds exactly like the band did almost ten years ago. I don't think that bands necessarily need to evolve always, but when your sound doesn't sound fresh and relevant, something needs to give. That's just not happening in the BFMV camp. The band is repeating itself in the worst way:they even resort to a re-hash of their classic track "Tears Don't Fall" on "Tears Don't Fall (Part 2)", which opens with Let's go (again!) scream, which is the reason why "Temper Temper" sounds so irrelevant and dated. That's why despite a few solid straight up metalcore tracks, it's difficult to take this band seriously in 2013.

6

Download: Temper Temper, Leech
For the fans of: Avenged Sevenfold, Trivium, Glamour Of The Kill, Black Thoughts Bleeding
Listen: Facebook

Release date 12.02.2013
RCA Records

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