album review ! :3
bullet for my valentine - the poison (2006)
xxherlastwalkxx 12/02/2023
oh yeah. oh yeah. i'm going to be completely honest, this album isn't anything groundbreaking at all, but it's kind of just really fun to listen to lol. a lot of the riffs are pretty generic, not that that's inherently a bad thing, of course. the harmonized riff in the faster sections of tears don't fall, for example, is one of my favorite riffs ever. it's not revolutionary. but it's a great riff and i really wish they used it more... the songwriting, in general, is pretty simple, most of the songs seem to be based on the typical verse-chorus sort of structure, though often with small modifications. for that reason, the songs are really catchy despite the songs being four, five, or even six minute long. there's also, of course, the whole singing vs. screaming interplay, which at this point is really just a marker for music that i like tbh. balance between singing and screaming is very important in the sort of post-hardcore/metalcore emo -- using one vocal style more than the other can be very effective, but i find that too much of one or the other can make songs and albums a little bland or predictable. i will admit that i think there's a noticably large amount of singing on this album, though well-written songs like "hit the floor" and "all these things i hate (revolve around me)" have interesting melodies and aren't burdened by the diminished role of screaming in the song.
while i think that its simplicity is generally a positive quality, it does make the tracklist get a little dull, especially the further into the tracklist you get. to be completely honest, sometimes i don't even want to listen to "the end" (assuming i even get that far) because it feels like it just drags out the tracklist. i don't think that any of the songs are "bad," there's definitely a noticable difference between songs on the first half of the album like "4 words (to choke upon)" and "suffocating under words of sorrow (what can i do)," which are energetic and exciting, versus stuff like "the poison" and "10 years today." this is a little embarassing, and probably more a comment on me than the album, but looking at the tracklist, i don't even remember what the second to last song, "spit you out," sounds like. maybe i just prefer shorter albums, but i feel like the album just keeps going, and that opinion is at least in part informed by the song quality, which seems to decline after a while. i could skip all the songs that follow "room 409" (except maybe "cries in vain") and not feel super guilty about it. the tracklist ends with "the end," which is one of the more dramatic kinds of closers, which really just rubs it in your face tbh. it's an alright song or whatever. but please i want to listen to something else now. please let me go.
idk. mixed feelings on this one. there are a lot of really cool songs on here, but it's confusing to me how the simplicity of the album doesn't seem to harm the first half of the album while being able to make the last group of songs kind of boring. normally i have can categorize an album into one of three groups: 1. worth listening to the entire way through, 2. some songs are playlistable but not amazing as an album, or 3. not worth listening to at all. but this one's kind of like... one and a half. lmao. tldr you can stop after "room 409" if you want and you won't miss too much. i have to give the album good credit for all the other songs though.
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