Blessed By A Broken Heart – Pedal To The Metal

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Century Media
Produced by Gggarth

That a metal band is musically described as ‘Christian metal’ is always a surprise. Not only because there’s not normally a need to limit your output to one subject, but because so many metal fans actually find it quite offensive.

That a metal fan finds anything offensive is also a surprise, but in the case of religious music it’s true. And entirely fair. After all, if a band wrote songs purposefully anti-Christian, Christian people would be offended, so it’s unstandable that non-Christians would be offended at having Christian songs sung at them.

The thing with Blessed By A Broken Heart is, if it hadn’t been, rightly or wrongly, stated in various places that they were a Christian metal band, it’s really not obvious at all that they are. Even knowing that they are when listening it’s nearly impossible to pick out any lyrics that are blatantly religious. So, Blessed By A Broken Heart therefore deserve to be merited on their music. Their new sound (they have one previous independent release in 2004 with an almost entirely different line-up) mixes traditional metal, modern rock and elements of metalcore in both some of the heavier riffs and the more extreme vocals.

New vocalist Tony Gambino can switch effortlessly between metalcore vocals and the kind of soft vocals you might find on a pop-punk record. The latter works on throw-away catchy pop-rock like To Be Young, and as a short departure from the metal, but otherwise is too nice. Carry On contains the most aggressive parts of the album, but this is more the legacy of original vocalist Hugh Charron, with some of Gambino’s melodic vocals over the top. Because of the younger sound of the vocals Blessed By A Broken Heart are more likely to appeal to younger listeners than they are to older metal fans.

Musically they’ve got all bases covered, from out-and-out metalcore heaviness, to traditional metal riffs and some excellent lead guitar playing. But here there are some serious negatives as well. The main one being the horrific disco-metal pop of Move Your Body. Even though at a couple of points it leans back into modern metal, it does it with the lyrics “Throw your hands up/and wave them like you just don’t care/Do the robot/Come on let me see those hands in the air”. Metal it ain’t.

They don’t quite have everything in place yet. Sometimes when listening to the album it doesn’t feel like they’ve entirely chosen the direction they want to take their music, so have made a song or two in several different directions to please the widest possible group of people. The pop-rock vocals are unlikely to adhere them to metal fans, but younger fans should find a lot to enjoy. Maybe on the next album they’ll settle into a style of their own a little more.

“ all bases covered ”

Tracklist: Intro / She Wolf / Show Me What You Got / Move Your Body / She Is Dangerous / To Be Young / Doin’ It (For The Rock) / Blood On Your Hands / Don’t Stop / Carry On / Ride Into The Night
Hot Topic Exclusive Bonus Tracks: Side By Side / License To Sin

Written by Andy Lye
More: Albums, Heavy Metal (Extreme Vocals), Blessed By A Broken Heart