Bring Me The Horizon - POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR (Album Review)

Bring Me The Horizon’s latest offering is the first in a series of ‘POST HUMAN’ EPs, offering a versatile ammo dump of pop-metal that brims with horror rage and technical excellence. 'SURVIVAL HORROR' is the follow up to last year’s ‘amo’ and shows the band to be in rude creative health.

One successful formal carry-over from ‘amo’ is a deft and sparing use of collaborations. Standout track Obey features Yungblud and is an anarchic metal epic that lands somewhere between the chunky technicality of Linkin Park and the gnarly thrash grooves of Metallica.​

Like much of the record, the sound is stadium-sized, with production compression and reverb combining to ensure you can hear all the fortissimo elements clearly.

This is a band who fully appreciate subtlety despite the volume, and the number of musical ideas that live on this EP is really something, with the presence of infarction-inducing stops (Ludens), Slayer-like guitar solos (Dear Diary,) and sentimental hate balladry (One Day The Only Butterflies Left Will Be In Your Chest As You March To Your Death).

Such variation indicates genuine musical development in a band who were for a long time popular despite their critical reception, not because of it. A good example is the Babymetal-fronted Kingslayer, which sounds like the soundtrack to a video game that combines intense gory violence with racing spaceships through futuristic Tokyo.

But most of all, this is an EP highly informed by (and conceived during) the global coronavirus pandemic and the lockdown that has accompanied it. Parasite Eve demonstrates this most powerfully: “You can board up your windows, you can lock up your doors, yeah / But you can't keep washing your hands of this shit anymore.”

In Bring Me The Horizon’s hands, lockdown is not a banal trawl through streaming platforms and weekly family Zoom calls, but devastating proof of man’s folly in the face of a raging and inevitable apocalypse. It's just a shame it will probably be another year before you can see it live.

Bring Me The Horizon Upcoming Tour Dates are as follows:

Tue September 21 2021 - GLASGOW SSE Hydro
Wed September 22 2021 - CARDIFF Motorpoint Arena Cardiff
Fri September 24 2021 - SHEFFIELD FlyDSA Arena Sheffield
Sat September 25 2021 - BIRMINGHAM Utilita Arena Birmingham
Sun September 26 2021 - LONDON O2

Click here to compare & buy Bring Me The Horizon Tickets at Stereoboard.com.

More Reviews from Jacob Brookman

Brockhampton - Roadrunner: New Light, New Machine

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - G_d's Pee at State's End!

Vic Mensa - I Tape

Slowthai - TYRON

Rhye - Home

Viagra Boys - Welfare Jazz

Rico Nasty - Nightmare Vacation

Sigur Rós - Odin's Raven Magic

Babeheaven - Home For Now

Kylie - Disco

Elvis Costello - Hey Clockface

Faithless - All Blessed

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