Review Summary: Bob Rock helps produce some of the best Black Veil Brides music so far.
Bob Rock is the God of Metal. The amount of talent he oozes into the albums he helps produce create some of the most intense and viscerally powerful pieces of music. Here, it seems he had decided to lend his talent's to Black Veil Brides, and the result is as good as I thought it was going to be.
For starters, I feel this album has some of the best drumming by Christian "C.C." Coma, so far. Songs like
Devil in the Mirror and
Last Rites feature him pounding away at the drums at rapid pace to ripping guitars from Jake Pitts. Other songs take a slower pace like
The Stolen Omen, here CC's drums are unfortunately neutered and the band returns to harsh croaking from their
We Stitch These Wounds phase. The result is something I wish they would just forget and move on from, but the track itself doesn't kill the whole album. Nevertheless, there are some other pretty bad tunes along with it, like
Walk Away, which attempts to copy the slow guitar riffing/sob lyrical content of
The Mortician's Daughter. The only problem being that Andy's voice has matured even more, so it just sounds ridiculously out of place.
The Shattered God and
Crown of Thorns bring back some of their Glam Metal days from
Set The World On Fire. Combining a plethora of nutty guitar playing, pacing drums, and anthem singing with choruses from Andy Biersack. Very good tracks with a lot of potential, but a lot of the guitar tends to go on and off throughout both tracks. I would have preferred a more continuous sound. This is opposite of some of my favorite tracks on the record like
Heart of Fire and
Faithless which utilize some of the best guitar playing from Jake Pitts, with some of the best lyrics by Andy so far.
"This Heart of Fire is burnin' proud,
I am every dream you lost and never found.
This Heart of Fire is stronger now.
Build your walls but you can't keep me out,
I'll burn 'em down."
One thing I will definitely note is
Goodbye Agony, which prominently makes use of Jinxx's rhythm guitar, the result being a better slow song than
Walk Away, with an extraordinary amount of power brought to the guitar despite it being a slow song. Leave it to Bob Rock to come up with such an ingenious paradox. Compared to all their previous albums,
BVB IV is definitely the most refined and well put together, probably owing to Rock's experience with Metal from his days with Metallica. The weirdest track on the album, however, has to be the Anthem/Glam Metal track
Drag Me to the Grave which seems to revel in its Bon Jovi influenced singing and drumming. It's good to a point, but a little obnoxious with how quickly the singing comes in, almost as if it is directly attempting to copy
You Give Love a Bad Name. I am not sure what they were thinking when making this track.
Regardless, this album is BVB at its most refined and powerful. It is obvious that they are constantly learning from their experience and improving. Despite the fact they claim to not listen to unabashed critics, they seem to not mind fixing issues brought up with their music. Bob Rock is one of the best decisions BVB could have made, as he applies his veteran history in Metal music to help create some of the best BVB music so far.
