Bring Me The Horizon, amo, Album Review
Bring Me The Horizon
amo
Album Review
The latest instalment and sixth studio album from Bring Me The Horizon is an interesting record to say the least and by far their most outlandish and innovative works to date.
It became common knowledge to me that with each album that Bring Me released, their style strayed further and further from their deathcore roots. This album however, confirms to the that the band have taken a completely different direction, with a brand-spanking new idea of what Bring Me The Horizon is. This became a very exciting prospect for someone such as myself as I felt this reflected the bands aim to grow with their audience (I mean, they couldn't be angsty forever) and I felt the most excitement with their two earliest teaser tracks "MANTRA" and "wonderful life", which I would praise as two of my favourite tracks from 2018.
But when I fully realised that the Bring Me brand was undergoing a massive change was with the teaser tracks that followed, which included "medicine" and "mother tongue". These two tracks displayed a never-before seen side to the band in which they showcased a far more pop-inspired style. And I was certainly not one to reject the bands ambition with these tracks, but I felt that the change was quite sudden when comparing them to the two previous teasers.
Upon the albums full release, my biggest fear towards the record unfortunately became reality; there was no sense of flow with the album in its arrangement of tracks and in most cases, became a heavy track, soft track, heavy track kind of pattern. Not to mention that on top of their more traditionally styled tracks and the pop-inspired tunes, there was also the track "nihilist blues" which stuck out to me like a sore thumb thanks to the underground rave/EDM inspired aesthetic that it has.
What I'm trying to get at here is that the album is just full of too many different sounding tracks that clash with each other very often. I can't help but think the band were just dipping their toes into pop but were too afraid to go all out incase of what their metal-head fans would think. The result being this ugly amalgamation of genres that don't work together that ultimately ruins the immersion of the album and caught me off guard quite regularly upon first listen.
Where this album really shines however, is when you take the tracks individually. While the tracks don't work well together on this album, there are still so many that I absolutely love! "in The dark" and "sugar honey ice & tea" offer and incredible compromise of the heavy and pop side of things and left me wishing the whole album could've sounded like this. I think "nihilist blues" which features Grimes definitely would've worked better for me if it was a Grimes song that featured Bring Me rather than the other way around, but nevertheless, it sound fantastic. And of course, it goes without saying that "MANTRA" and "wonderful life" still get me hyped to this day.
But my favourite track on the entire album has to be "i don't know what to say" which feels like the aesthetic leftovers of 2018 albums like Parkway Drive's "Reverence" and Architects' "Holy Hell". The story behind the song is about a friend of the band who had been diagnosed with cancer, and essentially how hard it is to try and find the words to say, once the title. But not only does the context of the track relate to two of my favourite 2018 album, the mixture of metal and orchestral elements, with a unique Bring Me twist, makes this track a real treat to the ears, an epic an emotional ballad and a marvellously grand finale to "amo".
Overall, the main con of this album is its flow/composition which is messy at best. However, the tracks that this album has to offer are more than enough to keep me listening and to regard "amo" as a big step forward for the band. With this, I hope that they can really stick to a more specific style with their next album and hope that they aren't afraid to go full-on pop as the Bring Me The Horizon have certainly showed fans that they can pull it off.
Thank you for reading
Booth Boy
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