By Ian Baker
Bring Me The Horizon has all the pieces necessary to put out a solid album. They demonstrate their technical proficiency on pretty much every track on their latest, Suicide Season, and it’s definitely not a lack of musicianship that brings the album down. Though they also show moments of songwriting promise, demonstrating a penchant for writing solid metalcore riffs, they then proceed to beat the listener over the head with those riffs for up to five minutes at a time.
The problem with Season is that the band feel like they have to write lengthy songs instead of just being concise and end up trying to stretch a little bit of good material far too thin. “Football Season is Over,” the album’s bright spot, clocks in at 1:56, proving that the band would be pretty good if they took a cue from Minor Threat and kept their songs to short bursts of aggression, instead of misguided angry ramblings. Vocalist Oliver Sykes draws favourable comparisons to Comeback Kid’s Andrew Neufeld, but one can’t help but think that when he screams, “I know something you don’t know!” at the end of “Chelsea Smile,” he’s probably right. Only the band knows why they felt the need to stretch what could have been a good 15-minute EP into 42 minutes of repetitive mediocrity.