Bring Me the Horizon were a band at a crossroads. On the one hand, they had just released what many will look back on as their masterpiece, There is a Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There is a Heaven, Let's Keep it a Secret., and were distancing themselves from any other band playing any brand of metalcore on any Warped Tour in the last half-decade. The album earned the band an inordinate amount of respect who once wrote the band off as an immature, gimmicky scene band in reaction to their earlier releases (alright, I'll admit it, I was one of them). On the other hand, though, there was a sizable piece of the band's fanbase who felt the band abandoned them, and went for a more mature sound that didn't have the blunt, biting lyrics they had begun to get used to. So here Bring Me the Horizon were, between the rock that was the overwhelmingly positive response to There is a Hell..., and the hard place that became a good chunk of their fanbase clamoring for songs reminiscent of Suicide Season or Pray for Plagues. The result of this pressure is an album frontman Oli Sykes wasn't sure would ever see its completion, and the band's attempt to bridge the gap between both sides of their spectrum of listeners, Sempiternal.
If you read the above paragraph thinking that Sempiternal is going to be the spawn of Suicide Season and There is a Hell, I'm here to tell you that you can rest easy. That's simply not the case here. What you will get, however, may take you off-guard a little. While there is a prevalent influence of every piece of work the band have released before on this album, there are also elements that we haven't seen from Bring Me the Horizon before. The key difference occurred when the album was being made, and guitarist Jona Weinhofen was relieved of his duties, and rather than being replaced by another guitarist, the band brought in Jordan Fish, who worked on keyboards and the programming on the album. This shift resulted in some interesting atmospheres created throughout the album, most readily seen on the two singles, "Sleepwalking" and "Shadow Moses." Metalcore and screamo have taken a beating thanks to bands' over-reliance on synths and keyboards, but Fish's contributions to Sempiternal never come off a gimmicky, and he proves to add more depth to the band's repertoire.
Left with all of the guitar duties, Lee Malia bears the weight wonderfully, as the band's sound stays as aggressive as ever, and the riffs Malia uses to combat Fish's programming on "Crooked Youth" and "And the Snakes Start to Sing." Malia gets his own chance to shine on "The House of Wolves." The band's musicianship has rarely been questioned (for good reason), and Sempiternal is another piece of proof that the band are one of the most creative manufacturers of metalcore in the scene today.
Before we start to hail Bring Me the Horizon as the next band to transcend the genre, though, there are a few flaws on this album that need to be addressed. The song "Anti-Vist" may be the worst of their career. Not because it's a throwaway track by all accounts, because the musicianship shows there was something on the song worth salvaging; but rather, because after There is a Hell, there was a hope that the immaturity that was so appallingly apparent on "Chelsea Smile" or "Diamonds Aren't Forever" was behind them. But in one track, the demons of the band's less-than-respectable past work reappear, and the whole album's feel is thrown off from it. "Anti-Vist" is a troublesome blip on the radar, but there are others on Sempiternal as well. The variety that helped to set There is a Hell apart isn't quite up to par this time around, as some of the tracks towards the middle and end of the album run into each other a little. There are a few memorable tracks, sure, but you likely won't be able to point to one as a landmark effort in the way you probably hailed "Crucify Me," "It Never Ends," or "Blessed with a Curse."
Though the misstep of "Anti-Vist" is a large one, the songwriting of Oli Sykes has seen some improvement. There is more of an effort and emphasis towards building melodies, and the songs have a little more structure than you'd be used to (is that a chorus in "Shadow Moses"? whoa). Still, Sykes's dark, personal lyrics keep the album from bogging down. Sykes takes aim at organized religion early and often, in songs like "The House of Wolves," "Go to Hell, for Heaven's Sake," and "Seen it All Before." This attack isn't quite the religious struggle Jesse Lacey found himself having in Brand New's monumental effort The Devil and God are Raging Inside Me, but Sykes certainly deserves credit for tackling such a delicate, difficult subject.
Considering the gigantic shoes they left themselves to feel thanks to the successes they've enjoyed up to this point, Bring Me the Horizon have offered up an excellent attempt to live up to the hype on Sempiternal. The band kept some of the aspects that made There Is a Hell such a pleasant surprise, and the addition of Jordan Fish's keys and the well-placed backing vocals from Immanu el give the band's sound new flair that show more signs of growth and creativity. There are a few growing pains, most readily seen on "Anti-Vist," and peppered throughout the album in select parts, but those pains are to be expected when following up such a landmark effort. It may not be the band you were expecting to hear, but Sempiternal shows that Bring Me the Horizon are a band growing into their own before our eyes, and they'll be around for a long, long time if they keep making music like this.
The Bottom Line: Is it better than There is a Hell? No. But Sempiternal is every bit as expansive and challenging an album as Bring Me the Horizon has ever created, even if it's not quite up to par with its predecessor.
Recommended if you rock: Underoath's Disambiguation, Secret and Whisper's Great White Whale, Norma Jean's Sempiternal
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