Review Summary: A drunken joke the band may well regret.
I can hear it now; the clanking sound of hammer meeting metal on the anvil, the harsh buzz coming from the grinding wheel as it forms the metal’s razor edge, and the sliding of these, now, blades meeting their snug scabbards. And to what end? Well, Bring Me the Horizon have officially put a bookend on their contentious 2019 with this new EP, and it’s the most extreme departure from their roots yet. Because it seems
Amo wasn’t enough to cause a heated debate amongst its fractured fanbase already, BMTH have decided to give one last push and a middle finger to their detractors four days before the year sees itself out. You know the ferment is growing when you find out this very EP exists, not because of the band announcing it but because someone on your Facebook has let their disdain be known.
You’re reading the opinion of someone who enjoys most walks of music, and encourages experimentation and exploration. Leaps into the unknown are what break the mundanity of familiarity and repetition for both the artist and its listener, it’s something that keeps the fire burning for creativity – whether they succeed at it or not. As such, I found
Amo to be a fantastic release for the band, easily one of this year’s biggest highlights, and a record that wasn’t as far removed from its roots as people would have you believe. Instead, it was an album that integrated plenty of new and exciting elements, namely electronics which have been a foreshadowing of theirs as far back as
Suicide Season, with a rockier sensibility. Whether you care to agree with it or not,
Amo is widely regarded as a success. Of course, I can’t overlook the fragmented fanbase and the fact it has caused an even bigger stir within the band’s camp ever since its release. The thing is, it’s hard to take
Music to Listen to… all that seriously when it is presented this way.
It’s clear the band is making a statement, albeit a rather tasteless one.
Music to Listen to… is devoid of compositional structure, narrative and flow. I’ve heard albums like this before, hell I’ve even made albums like this before. It’s the kind of record that gets made when you get together with a bunch of friends, get blind drunk and piss around with the instruments that are lying around while the record button stays on – but let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Essentially,
Music to Listen to… is a remix EP. When the record isn’t trolling you during one of its unpleasant repetitive loop segments, it’s taking samples from
Amo and giving them a little shake-up. Things start off promising enough, with “Steal Something”’s dreamy guitar introduction and thumping drum and bass… that is until Oli drowsily proclaims that he wants to
“steal something”. He doesn’t know what yet, but he wants to steal something. This is the tipping point – only three minutes into the EP – where you realise this is one big joke at the listener’s expense. But wait, things are about to get so much worse, because you’ve still got seven minutes of this song to hear yet; a bloated loop sat in a void of nothingness. It’s like being banished to Hell, where you’re subjected to relive the same horrendous, nightmarish loop over and over again.
I won’t outright obliterate this abomination though, because there are [some] moments of enjoyment to be had, as brief as they are. Moments that occasionally strike a compromise with its terribly cliché and rebellious proclamation. The most concise offering here, and the only piece you can truly call a “song” would be “Candy Truck/You Expected: LAB Your Result: Green”, a song that showcases some of the positive promise
Amo’s electronics had. It’s a shame too, because you can hear the potential burrowing underneath this pile of steaming garbage, the problem is that there’s so much here to sieve through. There are tiny portions of worth to be found in most tracks here, but like everything that’s worthwhile, these moments feel short-lived and get overshadowed by the EP’s incessant, arbitrary oblivion. The biggest F-you is definitely found four minutes into “Underground Big”, with its foray into the much sought-after metal influence of yore; a fifteen-second slither just long enough to get the metal fans riled up before cutting out with the most egregious and obnoxious electronic sample, which you’ll be hearing for the proceeding ten minutes, before finishing off with an additional eight minutes of darkened silence.
The problem with
Music to Listen to… is it alienates all parties. It spits in the face of fans who have chastised the band for being a bunch of sellouts, but it also insults the intelligence of fans who have continued to support their chosen paths. This EP wildly lashes out at everyone, and the result is a horribly incoherent mess, similar to the drunken slurs Oli laughably makes about consciousness on “Dead Dolphin Sounds ‘aid brain growth in unborn child’ Virtual Therapy / Nature Healing 2 hours”. This EP is a mistake that may well haunt the band for the foreseeable future, it’s not a classy look for them. Everything from the track names to the songs themselves come across as a juvenile, drunken spat; an overt commentary on their current dilemmas. There was no quality control here, I think it must have been off seeing its family over the Christmas holidays. No, all
Music to Listen to… consists of is Oli getting a little too merry and having the pressure get on top of him, which results in this embarrassing tantrum of an EP. It’s a surprising release, but for all the wrong reasons, and I think once Oli wakes up from his horrible hangover, the guilt will set in.
FORMAT//EDITIONS: DIGITAL
PACKAGING: N/A
SPECIAL EDITION BONUSES: N/A
ALBUM STREAM//PURCHASE: https://open.spotify.com/album/6yC6aLzX5knhWpKDidwxft?si=wC6JIEBUR42zkn65zEGktg
