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Bullet For My Valentine: Fever

27/08/10 || Khlysty

This review’s gonna be Khlysty-in-old-man-gloom mode. If you don’t think you’ll like my cantankerous self, just skip it, okay? Well, then…

I really cannot understand kids today. They have at their disposal a tremendous amount of music to choose from. They have extremely easy access to this music, to sample it, to buy it very cheaply, to stream it, to download it –legally or not-, to swap it with others. Also, they can easily find huge amounts of information about the music, the players, about what’s hot and what’s not. They can easily approach what’s considered to be “out-there” or “underground”, as easily as they can find the more mainstream strains of music. They can compare, they can find what’s new, they can listen to records long before they are made public, through leaks –intentional or otherwise. And, despite all these privileges, they still make the worst choices possible.

Back in the day, it was a miracle if the record store owner, whom you’ve already made richer by your purchases, would grace you with a small sample of the new record of band X that you were interested in buying. Information about new releases came through printed material (mags, fanzines, sometimes newspapers…) and the radio and TV, which meant that there was a lot of middle-men between you and the artists you were interested in. Did we make better choices than the kids today? Well, mostly not. BUT, even though my generation made huge stars out of Poison, Bon Jovi or Ratt, at least we also gave more extreme bands like Iron Maiden, Queensrÿche, Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax, etc a chance to get out of the underground and become household names.

The above rant was made so that I can make you understand my repulsion towards what’s considered to be “mainstream” metal today. Since the mid-‘90s, when grunge became extinct and was elbowed unceremoniously outta the scene by nu-metal, there seems to be a great decline in the kids taste about heavy music. So, today, what the kids seem to love is what’s called metalcore, or emocore, or some other equally vomit-inducing name. Whatever one chooses to call it, though, one thing remains certain: it’s shitty music, to its fucking core, so the best tag for it is shitcore. This shitcore thingy is nothing more than a regression of nu-metal to abysmal depths of mediocrity and nauseating poppiness.

These metalcore/shitcore bands seem to have found a new shtick to trick the gullible masses that they’re the “real mccoy” when it comes to heaviness: by keeping the downtuned guitars of nu-metal, but subtracting the rapping and the “groove” and replacing it with supposedly angst-ridden vocals plus the occasional screaming (to justify the –core thingy) and by using these materials on totally basic pop/rock melodies, they appeared as the saviors for millions of adolescent kids all around, who embraced the extremely shitty and obviously faux-heavy music as the next messiah. Enter the multinational labels, who smelled easy blood, and the trick is on full display.

My Chemical Romance. Killswitch Engage. Atreyu. The Devil Wears Prada. And, now, Bullet For My Valentine, just to name only a handful of the jillions of shitcore bands, whose music pollutes the airwaves, passing for something-like-metal, with their poppy tunes, their pseudo-angst-y vocals, their not-exactly-heavy guitars, their silly screams, their ridiculous photo-ops that make even Immortal seem serious-minded, their pre-adolescent lyrics, their polished multi-thousand-dollars production jobs, their unashamed stealing from NWOBHM and thrash, their incapability of even trying to seem less profit-oriented than they really are, their stupid ballads… Shit, this is getting too much to bear…

Anyway, here’s Bullet For My Valentine’s “Fever”, the third album from them Welsh metalcore dudes, and if you’ve read all the above you don’t need anything more. Just let me add a coupla details and I’m outta here, real fast: the record is way too long; at 50 minutes, it makes sure that there a lot of filler and redundancies. The combination of whiny clean vocals and occasional screaming is laughable and kills even the songs that seem to have a coupla interesting riffs in them. There’s TWO FUCKING BALLADS! The production seems to have come out of a lab and not a studio: too glossy, too antiseptic, too I-wanna-be-big-in-America-friendly. The lyrics seem to be written by a ten-year-old who had his first failed affaire-de-cœr and throws a tantrum. The hooks are big, oily and totally useless to any discerning fan of not-mass-produced music. Need I go on?…

OK, then, please, if you like metal, even a little bit, avoid this record and this band at all costs. That’s all there is to it…

P.S.: during the three times that I suffered through the record, behind the useless noise made by BFMV, I was able to hear a small, Gollum-like voice saying something like “Yessss, more moneyssss, more fanssssss, more dollarsssss… My precccccciousssssss! We wantsssss moressssss….”. But, hey, I have a vivid imagination and I’m too jaded a fuck…

Information
Released: 2010
Label: Jive
Website: www.bulletformyvalentine.com
Band
Matthew Tuck: vocals, rhythm guitar
Michael Paget: lead guitar, backing vocals
Jason James: bass, backing vocals
Michael Thomas: drums, percussion

Tracklist
01. Your betrayal
02. Fever
03. The last fight
04. A place where you belong
05. Pleasure and pain
06. Alone
07. Breaking out breaking down
08. Bittersweet memories
09. Dignity
10. Begging for mercy
11. Pretty on the outside

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