I really don’t see what all the fuss is about. Sure, this world is evil and fallen and rotten and all those other things, but do we really need another band telling us that? Bullet For My Valentine’s debut album, The Poison, is laborious, aimlessly angry, and a little tiresome, but it’s also pretty cool. It is filled with tortured screaming and all the self-mutilating fun a guy could want, and you really have to be in the right mode to listen to it.
What mode is that, you ask? Well, you need to be feeling anger at the world in general, like your life doesn’t have a whole lot of purpose, and that you are helpless in the face of your own circumstances. And it helps if your girlfriend just dumped you. In truth, The Poison brings a lot of good things to the table. The guitar sound is simply awesome, the drums
As much as it grooves, jerks, and jostles in a good way, the thing that turns me off is the screaming. Why do so many bands today feel it necessary to scream at the top of their lungs? And I don’t mean occasionally; all the freaking time! Never mind that the lead singer cannot possibly hope to do it every night without needing surgery in short order; it’s just not as good as singing. In Bullet For My Valentine’s case, they don’t scream to cover up the fact that they can’t sing, because they certainly can. Instead, it comes out of a passion and fervency for what they are screaming about. I can respect the idea behind that, even if I don’t like the particulars.
On the plus side, the thing that’s causing the songwriter so much trouble is one we can all identify with: love. Really, his reactions to the wrongs that love has dealt him are not the best (like the titular bullet), but we are all prone to them, and we have all had them at one time or another (in spirit, anyway). In that way, Bullet For My Valentine are making music that is pretty universal, whether we want to admit it or not.
In summation, I liked The Poison; I just don’t think I’ll really listen to it that much. In fact, I would be fine with
Intro/Her Voice Resides
Tears Don’t Fall
Cries In Vain
2 comments:
Why is it that the thing that makes Arcade Fire so good, their passion, seem to turn you off from The Poison? Especially since, from your reviews, it sounds like The Poison does its music better.
i think it's the nature of the passion, or rather the nature of the music their passion produces. Arcade Fire is passionate, and that passion creates music with beauty and subtlety. BFMV is also passionate, but they channel that into screaming, which i find to be distasteful. Ugliness, like BFMV espouses, has its place, but given the choice between beauty and ugliness, i'll take beauty. and i didn't mean to make it seem that BFMV does what they do better than Arcade Fire. over time and repeated listens, my appreciation for Arcade Fire's work has increased, while that of BFMV has decreased.
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