Bullet For My Valentine – Scream Aim Fire

artist website

publisher

impulse buy

20-20 Entertainment
Produced by Colin Richardson

From a personal point of view this album is astonishing. Perhaps unfairly I’d always written Bullet For My Valentine off and sat them in the same shallow emo mire as My Chemical Romance and similar. With Scream Aim Fire it’s now clear they’re a real metal band. Who’d have thought?

Actually it probably wasn’t so unfair. While admittedly heavier than most of their centenaries, BFMV were still an emocore band. Every song, and that clipped angsty clean vocal tone that Matt Tuck shared with many others, gave them exactly the same sound as the rest of the post-hardcore-emo-screamo-the-world-hates-me-I’m-so-alone-but-so-individual crowd. But now they’ve adopted an aggressive metal sound that’s both much harder and much more melodic than before. The angst is mostly gone and suddenly their songs have some genuine meaning to them, with more musicianship than any of the bands who’ve graduated from the same school of teen-appeal music.

Tuck has replaced his previously annoying tone with a slightly nasally but much more metal sounding clean tone, keeping his (generally weak) growling to a minimum. Everything the band have incorporated into their new sound is evident on lead single and title track Scream Aim Fire, which manages the rare achievement of being catchy enough to be a successful single while losing none of the metal attitude from the rest of the album. It’s one of the best songs on the album with razor sharp guitars (think Trivium or even a slightly softer Lamb of God), a wonderful slower, pounding, ultra-heavy mid-section which returns at the end and wailing solos.

Eyes of The Storm does an unexpectedly good job of maintaining the heady momentum started by the opener but does feel a little like it’s retreading the same ground. Perhaps it’s going to be the second single? (although I strongly suspect Say Goodbye is lined up for that honour). Not to worry, one or two similarly styled tracks on an album is OK. Perhaps a little bit of cleverer track ordering might have been a good idea.

Elsewhere on the album there are some very surprising moments (to anyone not expecting such well crafted metal from this band). The wonderful twin lead guitar melodies in Take It Out On Me, the out-and-out pounding metal of Waking The Demon, and the magnificent ballad Say Goodnight with exquisite guitar melodies and solos and Tuck’s best singing before a heavy ending which brings in the aggression of the rest of the album but loses none of the epic feel of the first half of this song.

A couple of the tracks go on a little too long (Deliver Us From Evil, Forever As Always – also available as an excellent acoustic version on the b-side of the Scream Aim Fire single), but in each case only by a minute or so with repeated riffing and/or choruses which can easily be skipped if you do start to tire of them.

While I still don’t put any stock in their older material, Bullet For My Valentine have proven with Scream Aim Fire that they’re a much more skilled and complete band than I’d previously given them credit for and have produced a modern metal classic with enough nods to the traditional to please almost any metal fan.

“ genuine meaning ”

Tracklist: Scream Aim Fire / Eye of The Storm / Hearts Burst Into Fire / Waking The Demon / Disappear / Deliver Us From Evil / Take It Out On Me / Say Goodnight / End of Days / Last To Know / forever And Always
USB Bonus Track: Ashes of The Innocent

Written by Andy Lye
More: 2008, Albums, Heavy Metal, Bullet For My Valentine