Review Summary: "I may have gone too far in a few places."- George Lucas
I have no problem with a band evolving or even dramatically changing their sound over time. It is alienating to most but oftentimes I find it at least intriguing and can respect artists making what they truly want to make. When
That’s the Spirit came out, it was clear which direction the band wanted to go, which was to greatly expand their fanbase by swerving to making more radio-friendly Linkin Park inspired pop music. To their credit, it worked spectacularly with Bring Me the Horizon now being a household name in popular alternative music, having achieved fame in a way that metalcore bands just can’t reach. They’ve since added much more influences from popular music trends and have shed most of their heaviness with downtuned guitars and screams taking a back seat to pulsating electronics and pop choruses. I’ve long accepted that the band will never make another
Suicide Season or
Sempiternal let alone another
Count Your Blessings and you know what, I don’t want them to. Each successive album they put out did feel like a natural evolution of the band whether I liked it or not.
Post Human: NeX GEn may be the next logical line in that evolutionary chain but for our own sake let's hope that’s where the species dies out.
Smashing together the music that was popular at the time and metal together isn’t a new thing, hell it’s been a thing since nu-metal took off in the 1990’s with the evergrowing rap genre being added to the mix. The current popular genre to be thrown into the alternative metal smoothie is hyperpop whose extremity and distortion could in theory be combined with metal successfully. Bring Me the Horizon however, mixes these genres together with the tact of a toddler smashing its blocks together. The synths and electronics of this album, much like a lot of hyperpop, are incredibly loud, glitchy and overwhelming. They often ride a lot of the lacking weak riffs which combine to create a true cacophony of sound which makes you feel the onset of a throbbing headache and will have you reaching for the Tylenol. Breakdowns are just thrown in seemingly by the spin of a wheel most notably on “LosT” while a breakdown with sugary sweet synths is playing over the lyrics “I think I’m going to breakdown”, which I at first thought I hallucinated hearing. Cohesiveness is just thrown out the window and while messiness can be charming in certain circumstances but this definitely isn’t one. Obnoxious would be the main word that comes to mind instead. The production on this album doesn’t help either as it is all over the place from track to track, with the heavier songs like “YOUtopia'' having a muddiness to them and the pop tracks like “DiE4u” coming off as a glitchy, overbearing electronic disasters, with the vocals from Sykes' drowning at sea in horrid vocal effects. These computerized effects completely neuter his completely fine performance, he still sounds great on the few times he uses his high and low screams and while his singing has never been standout, it’s not bad at all. “AmEN!” is the closest thing to a good song on the album, with Oli turning back the clocks vocally with his screams and Daryl Palumbo of Glassjaw also injects some energy, but again in the theme of the album it lacks any sort of cohesion with the Lil Uzi Vert feature being so brief and feeling wildly out of place.
Lyrically it’s another story for Sykes with this album drifting into his worst tendencies as a writer. If you thought “Antivist" and “Happy Song” were poorly written anthems designed for middle schoolers to feel like a badass to, then wait until you hear these beauties. Sykes has been through a lot with his mental health and drug addiction, and it's an understandable topic to touch on, but unfortunately he writes about these heavy subjects in the most predictable and insipid way possible. “Did my back hurt your knife” is a standout on “R.i.p. (duskCOre RemIx)” with a One Direction-esque chorus whining about a friend’s betrayal that reads like something straight out of a high schooler’s diary. Don’t worry the extremely forced, juvenile and edgy anti-religious lyrics show up here as well on “a bulleT w- my namE On” with the line “And if Jesus Christ returns, we’ll just kill the ***er twice” being of course given to Spencer Chamberlain of Underoath which will probably make you physically shudder if you have any sense of shame. The addiction meeting theme of “n/a" is another lowlight with the self-pitying chorus reading like a kid mad about being grounded by their parents, not someone who should have some level of genuine, introspective and deep reflection. There is no subtlety, no subtext and nothing to read into just poorly written immature screeds of someone who should’ve grown up by now. Sykes has never been a good lyricist, but it’s much easier to overlook some leftover teenage angst while in the youthful exuberance of your early 20’s not when you are pushing 40 years old.
Musically, there actually is a variety of genres being used here which on the surface should keep the album fresh. There is metalcore, hyperpop, trap, R&B, pop-punk, nu-metal, EDM and even the ever growing genre of Deftones plagiarism. Speaking on the latter “liMOusine” does capture in part the essence of Deftones with it’s downtuned repeated fuzzy riff but Sykes just can not croon like Chino Moreno, especially in the higher register, and the again brief solo feature from AURORA not adding much to the song with the dual vocal section sounding like a muddy mess due to the production. There is even two insufferable interludes one “[ost] (spi)ritual” being a trap beat around a spoken word section about the pentagram and the other “[ost] puss-e” an unlistenable drum and bass track being what I can only assume is a meta-ironic prank. They just threw every single idea that popped in their head when creating this album and didn’t think for one second that they could've possibly thought of a bad idea. This is not like creating a nice delicious fruit smoothie with a consistent taste, it’s more akin to throwing a McDonald’s meal into the blender. Some may find this innovative but in reality it just feels like trendhopping to appeal to children, which does fit the embarrassing lyrics admittedly. It might not be but what’s worse, appealing to 14 year old girls to make more money or this being an actual genuine artistic expression.
Hyperpop isn’t even transgressive or groundbreaking anymore in 2024 like it was five years ago, it’s almost expected at this point to have some sort of influence in popular music now. Is it really reinventing the wheel to smash the worst excesses of the genre with breakdowns and saccharine pop choruses? This definitely isn’t anything fresh with bands like Enter Shikari and Attack Attack! combining the electronic trends of the day with fun breakdowns and screamed vocals over 15 years ago (Jesus I am old). The early sounds of these bands had a sort of clumsiness in their slapdash combo but that’s what made it charming especially knowing it was created with the energy of literal teenagers in their parents' basements. These two worlds never really collided before and at least made you intrigued for one listen just to see what it was. It feels like it was a right of passage as a metalhead at that time to listen and watch in horror or awe at the music video for “Stick Stickly”. Now the music world is in much less isolated bubbles and has intersected so much it doesn’t even make you think twice. There is simply a point where the zaniness becomes predictable in a way it didn’t in the past due to the shock. You just come to expect the guitars cutting out for electronics or a synth led breakdown or a completely random guitar solo like in “Kool-Aid". It’s just a complete jumbled mess of almost incoherent nonsense and forget making sense of this as an album experience. It’s also worth noting that almost every song on the album has a soaring, catchy chorus that feels like they are written first and then fitted around a song. These are used as crutches to cover the incredibly lacking songwriting and is exhausting by the halfway point with every hook trying their hardest to dig their way in your head. Speaking of which 55 minutes is an absolutely interminable length which feels neverending and by “R.i.p.” the pounding electronics and unbearable sugary chorus complete with the boy band “whoa-oh-oh” post-chorus made me want to tapout.
Looking back ten years from now, what do you think is more possible,
Post Human: NeX: GEn sounding like a painful time capsule of pop tendencies at the time or ahead of its time masterpiece? I think it’s much more likely to echo the same fate as Korn’s brostep/nu-metal album
The Path of Totality which is still hard to fathom actually happened in this reality and is maybe the most dated artifact to ever exist. This raises the question, is this truly experimental music or is it just hopping on pop bandwagons to sell more records? Perhaps this is the continued natural evolution of Bring Me the Horizon, but it's evolved into an almost unrecognizable hodge-podge of sludge that no longer appeals to me at all.
