Released: 25th January 2019
Rating: ★★★
On 2015’s ‘That’s The Spirit’, Bring Me The Horizon cast off the shackles of expectation. Long held as British radio’s mainstream heavy band of choice, the Sheffield five-piece supersized their evolution, creating a record that punched through the ceiling and sent them spiralling to the steps of festival headlining nirvana.
For anyone still hoping to see Bring Me ‘return to their roots’, look away now. Though that grit still shakes underneath ‘amo’, it’s mostly restrained, replaced with a modernist sheen with few boundaries. ‘Ouch’ glitches and bubbles like a broken radio, almost as much Chase and Status as Bring Me The Horizon, while ‘Medicine’ cruises down the pure pop lane.
It’s ‘Nihilist Blues’ where the most attention lies, though. Teaming up with the once sacred Grimes, it’s a song that’s possibly skewed more towards her end of the musical universe. Initially a shiny banger, it’s only when the Canadian polymath truly arrives in a creepy whisper that it descends into the darkness. Skulking in the shadows, it transforms into something far more sinister.
Combine the rawness of their past with the musical scope of their present, and Bring Me The Horizon’s future could be very bright indeed.
Stephen Ackroyd
