How do you follow an album like Sempiternal? On September 11, 2015, Bring Me The Horizon showed the world that they weren’t interested in recreating that record: they were going somewhere new entirely…
This is a reprint of the original Kerrang! album review of That’s The Spirit from September 2015, when BMTH were tasked with following up its massive predecessor Sempiternal and finding out whether they’d sink or swim…
Where some bands peak, others fly. Where some bands struggle and strain and reach with all their will to get their fingertips on the ceiling of greatness before slithering back down onto terra firma, the truly great smash through it and keep going, propelled into genuinely unknown territory. And as has been said many times now, when Bring Me The Horizon left Wembley Arena’s stage on December 5, 2014, it didn’t feel like a roll of a dice that, by chance, had come up trumps, never to be repeated like so many other folk who have made it there for one night only – it felt like a door to something much bigger being kicked open. And as they stand, ready to take a leap to become probably the band of this generation – British or otherwise – Bring Me The Horizon have done something extraordinary with the follow-up to Sempiternal. They’ve taken a fucking big risk.
Know this: That’s The Spirit is not a metal album. And it’s delighted not to be. There are no thrashing scream-fests, no breakdowns. The big beats and Ibiza-ish electronics that previously added colour to the heaviness are firmly up front here. “People said Throne isn’t very heavy,” Oli Sykes. “Well, that’s as heavy as you’re getting...” But this isn’t a softening up, or a filing away of sharp edges. Just as Metallica reached the zenith of arranging a thousand tricky riffs into dizzying musical mazes on …And Justice For All, and so went in a looser, simpler direction on The Black Album, BMTH by their own admission perfected their metal stuff on Sempiternal, and have created something new, instead of running in ever-decreasing circles.
Throne, True Friends and the title-track are huge, Linkin Park-ish rock songs, with keyboards galore, too huge sounding for anywhere other than arenas. Follow You and What You Need, meanwhile, are more mellow affairs that drift along on a simple beat and a shining, blissful melody, while Avalanche – Oli’s exploration of being diagnosed with ADHD, and how it helped him understand his problems with drugs – hits your heart like a dagger made of ice; deadly, but chilling at the same time. And throughout, the frontman’s pessimism-as-optimism worldview gives the whole thing a bleak shell, which when digested becomes perfectly uplifting. That’s The Spirit by Oli’s own admission takes the piss out of the idea of soldiering on with a smile instead of admitting that some bits of life are just shit, while opener Doomed is the sort of thing you’d play as fire rains down from the sky.
In honesty, it takes a couple of listens. But when the penny drops, the picture becomes clear. Bring Me The Horizon continue to fly precisely because they know how to flap their wings. Had they recreated Sempiternal, it would have been good. But by stabbing in the dark and boldly going where they’ve never gone before, they’ve made something genuinely great. Now that’s the spirit.
Rating: 5/5
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