BRING ME THE HORIZON | Amo | Album Review

Let's not beat around the bush. Bring Me The Horizon has been far removed from their early material. What was once a very energized deathcore band has now become an experimental rock band that enjoys playing around with certain ideas in order to make them work. It's a characteristic that many bands who blew up alongside Bring Me The Horizon have tried to do and while a portion of those have evolved in a great way, there are the acolytes that copy and paste the evolutions that others have gone through with much more dismal results. But, even in that case, this band is an anomaly in the fact most people seem to dislike "Count Your Blessings" and much of their early deathcore twinged work and immediately go for their most recent works "Sempiternal" and "That's The Spirit" as career bests. That doesn't happen often with musicians. Most bands change their style these days and get scrutinized by fans but from all that I have gathered that hasn't been the case for Bring Me The Horizon, who are at it again with their sixth album "Amo". This album is said to be their most experimental and crazy yet with band members coming forward to corroborate their ambitions. There is also a theme surrounding this album's tracks about love, with the word "Amo" itself being a Portugese word meaning "I love". It's not a secret at all that Bring Me The Horizon have the ability to write and execute good music as we've seen previously, but what exactly is that indicative of for this project? 

The first released single from this album that was put out back in August was "Mantra", which is in all capital letters on the tracklist while the other tracks are listed in lowercase. This song definitely did give me high hopes for this project to be a good follow up to the band's last album and after listening to the album in its entirety, I can honestly say that "Mantra" is still the highlight of this entire album. Being the first actual track on this album after an atmospheric intro in "I Apologize If You Feel Something", "Mantra" has a very good foundation that stays stable all the way through. The writing on this song particularly is clever and works well with the flow of the song. Specific aspects of the song that stick out well are the automated female voice that says the word "mantra" at the end of every chorus and the bridge which works very well to hook together the second and third choruses. It feels right for this to be a leadoff single as it has the most appeal out of the three prereleased tracks. I'll get to "Wonderful Life" later on in the review, but "Medicine" is much more of a pop leaning track that's a dime a dozen and while there are good vocal melodies here it's a type of track you can hear anywhere in the current pop music cycle today and it doesn't stick out in any way. And unfortunately, the rest of the album does not really deliver as much either. 

Being perfectly honest, this album is multiple elements put into a blender and not mixed thoroughly. It's an album that takes its stylistic influences and doesn't take them in any cohesive or innovative direction. Regarding the band's comments about it being a crazy album, they were definitely hitting the nail on the head with that idea, but not in the way they thought. There are definitely good aspects to this album, such as palatable guitar riffs that appear on several tracks, most notably "Sugar Honey Ice And Tea", but a lot of these tracks introduce ideas that don't mesh well together. And when it's not completely messy, the album goes for a more generic and predictable route, with tracks like "Mother Tongue" falling in line with "Medicine" as stuff we've heard before in pop music as well as abroad. Tracks like the awful manure heap that is "In The Dark", and even the aforementioned "Sugar Honey Ice And Tea" fall apart lyrically and offer very little that's salvageable as far as lyrical content goes. "Wonderful Life" also includes Dani Filth of Cradle Of Filth who has no business being on this track as it has a good hook, but his awful screaming ruins an otherwise good track with a bevvy of potential. "Why You Gotta Kick Me When I Down" includes an off-putting trap beat and an intolerable kid choir who sings the title and it only induces a facepalm. There's also "Fresh Bruises" where the lyrics are so terribly muffled that they're inaudible behind a generic dancehall type beat. It's like this album was made by highly inebriated people on steroids trying to make a 51 minute album but falling completely flat at most turns.

 

Don't get me wrong because this album does have its highlight tracks. "Heavy Metal" has an excellent guitar riff and more of a core focus set in place with the electronic elements and vocals coming from Rahzel, and the adjacent track and closing cut "I Don't Know What To Say" has a good use of orchestration in place as well as a more honest approach to the writing and overall execution, but these are placed at the end. And the other highlight, "Mantra", is placed at the beginning, which means the only real bright spots on this album are the bookends. The middle of the album fluctuates from being tolerably generic to incredibly disjointed and messy to being insufferable in the case of "In The Dark" and "Why You Gotta Kick Me When I'm Down". Not to mention the band themselves do a good job whenever they can and Oli Sykes does exhibit a lot of power in his vocal performance. But, simply put, this experiment did not go over well. The band still has talent and it's shown in some areas on this album, but as for the final product itself it's pretty much a chore to get to from front to back outside of a couple of decent songs. It's easily one of the most jarring experiments I have heard in quite a while and I'm not just saying that because of the direction into more pop-leaning music. It's just a mess. Overall, some fans of Bring Me The Horizon may like this album and it will have its audiences, for sure, but most of "Amo" and its tracks don't leave a lot to really love about it.

 

RATING: 4/10 

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