Review Summary: It's official. As it stands, this band's best quality its name.
I don’t dislike Bring Me The Horizon. I don’t necessarily enjoy their music, but it’s always seemed to have a purpose. It had a reason to exist. When I go back and listen to albums like “That’s The Spirit” or “Count Your Blessings”, I can see the niche that’s being filled, and I can easily identify the redeeming qualities that those albums have. There was a point to them. If nothing else, there was some legitimate effort that was put into these albums, regardless of how good they ended up being. Somebody cared when making these.
Which begs the question: Why❓Why did this album need to exist. What purpose does Amo serve❓Well, here’s the kicker. There isn’t. When I listen to this album, it truly perplexes me. I cannot understand why it had to exist, save for a purely monetary standpoint. I almost can’t even think of what to say about this album, because despite its 51 minute runtime, there’s literally nothing here.
For an album to be good, it first and foremost needs to have been made by people that wanted to make a good album. Technical prowess, or ability to pander to mainstream audiences mean absolutely nothing if nobody wanted to make something decent. That’s why albums like “Origin” by Imagine Dragons, or “Trench” by Twenty One Pilots are technically decent, but are still godawful. No one involved gave a ***, and it shows.
And that issue is multiplied to the nth degree with Amo. This album feels like it came off of an assembly line, and into your innocent, unsuspecting ears. Throughout the entirety of this LP, one theme permeates through, and that central idea is “*** you.” And when I say that, I don’t mean “*** you” in the way that bands like Nirvana, RAGTM, or Cross Dog say it. It’s more to the tune of “We didn’t care about making this album, but we’re gonna get your money anyways.”
And that truly is how it feels. There is not a single aspect of this album that stands out in any way. There’s no redeeming qualities, and absolutely nothing about it that’s bad enough to make it memorable. It’s the musical equivalent of Justice League, or Walmart. No love went into this heaping pile of dog ***. This is not an album. This is a product at best, and a tax evasion scheme at worse. Don’t listen to this album if you’re a fan of BMTH. Don’t listen to this album ironically. Just don’t.
