Review Summary: gEt mE HiGh LikE aN AtTic
Exospherial Jazzcat: Why would one start an album with a 20-second long intro?
Gvmnt Incel Dog: Stop Counterparts discourse this time I'm serious. Why is the barista drinking the flat white I ordered?
Exospherial Jazzcat: Okay sorry. We walked but you might have had a little too much of the stuff. There is no barista.
Gvmnt Incel Dog: ***. I guess there really is no hope of resuscitating society. Are we all players in a sick robot game and has the world been swept by parasitic-
Exospherial Jazzcat: You’re so last album. EP? Record. I’m tired already, aren’t you?
Gvmnt Incel Dog: Tired. Tired. New album, who?
Exospherial Jazzcat: Bring Me The Horizon. Sheffield four-piece. Lacking in omega 3.
Gvmnt Incel Dog: Excellent do they have instruments?
Exospherial Jazzcat: They do! Several instruments. Do you?
Gvmnt Incel Dog: Ableton?
Exospherial Jazzcat: English please.
Gvmnt Incel Dog: I am a dog.
state-of-the-art emotion simulator of ancestors of the yesteryear
While the opening seconds of
Post Human: Nex Gen might make one wonder whether this project will be a step up from Bring Me The Horizon’s most recent work, “Youtopia” copy-pasting a Deaf Havana riff immediately after casts some doubts. As a whole, the annoyingly capitalised track is fine; it’s serviceable background noise with a chorus destined for Reading, Leeds, perhaps Rock Im Park, and mayhaps Sziget… and that’s a bit of a problem.
The Oli Sykes-fronted outfit have been many things during their existence, but even in their most inoffensive form (
That’s the Spirit) they somewhat convincingly shaped an edgy, daring image - trashing Coldplay’s table will surely get you there. Now, in 2024, BMTH are still doing approximately every genre ever, but for the first time ever, they’re just f
ucking boring. Again: serviceable background noise with a chorus to be enjoyed by drunk Europeans and approximately no one else. Sure, there’s the mandatory Deftones ripoff, there’s a ballad, there’s grunge, there’s breakdowns, but ultimately, every song feels the same. There’s not a whole lot of fun to be had here, and the constant [ost] interludes unconvincingly tie the project into something more than a collection of singles and some other songs they dreamt up in four wee- years.
The lyrics. Oh god, the lyrics. Look: if hearing the word “therapy” six times per song can convince a single person to go to therapy it’s a certified W - Simple Plan sure helped me a lot back in the day - however, I don’t know if it's part of this album's appeal that a ton of its songs sound written by
as well as for 13 year olds, but this one wears that so convincingly it's quite frankly scary. The record’s persistent (failed) surface-level attempts at mental health awareness are honestly not that far off from when MGK posted a custom built guitar in the shape of a razor blade for edge cred and the real Olli (from Static Dress) dunked him for it. Thankfully Bring Me The Horizon do remember to rip off MGK on several tracks here too. Ugh, yikes, this might just be the first album I’m Too Old for… but if I’m too old for this, surely Oli would be too?
I don’t know; the phrase “age is just a number” is a recurring mantra in
the scene for a reason, I guess. At the end of the day,
Post Human: Nex Gen is genuinely impressive. How does one band manage to rip off Deaf Havana, Deftones, Boston Manor, Enter Shikari, Porter Robinsonbithfimtaylorswift, Green Day, Radiohead, MGK, Iggy Pop and DreamWeaver, feature Underoath, Aurora, Lil Uzi Vert, Daryl Palumbo and Glassjaw… and be this goddamn boring? It’s a true testament to Bring Me The Horizon’s songwriting: packaging Festival-core blandness as Pandering Pieces of Content. I guess it doesn’t help that the Fish left. But who cares? People will listen to this music and future music they put out also. As long as they can write a chorus, they are fine.
