Bullets For My Valentine
Scream Aim Fire



One of the freshest metal bands to come out of the UK in the last 20 years, Bullet for my Valentine have been hailed as a key player in the metalcore scene, and in the metal scene as a whole. Their first album, The Poison, released in October 2005, has sold close to a million albums, 340,000 in the USA alone, not bad for a band from Bridgend.
Unfortunately, the follow up has been a painful and drawn out affair. Vocalist Matt Tuck suffered with numerous throat problems, which led to the cancellation of some shows in July 2006, and perhaps more disappointingly (but for the inclusion of Machine Head at the last minute) a support slot on Metallica’s Sick of the Studio ’07 tour. However, with Tuck’s voice back to something resembling healthy, its time to get excited again, as the heaviest of the three biggest 'metal’ bands in Wales (the others being Lostprophets and Funeral For A Friend) are back.
And it’s a great start. The title track blasting out of the speakers with a refreshing and reassuring crunch. Tuck’s throat problems seem to have disappeared, and his melodic vocals are a rare pleasure on the scene at the moment. The twin guitar attack of Tuck and Michael 'Padge’ Paget sounding particularly strong, it’s a great opening track. On the down side it is clearly influenced by Iron Maiden, especially Michael 'Moose’ Thomas’ militaristic, gunning drum beat, and also by new-wave thrash bands, particularly Trivium, whose 'The Crusade’ appears to have been a particular inspiration., but it still blasts the cobwebs away and sets the album up for what is to come.
The next track, 'Eye of the Storm’, follows a similar pattern, with a melodic chorus in between heavy verses. 'Hearts Burst into Fire’ is much more melodic, reminiscent of their Welsh brothers in arms, Funeral For a Friend, but FFAF, for all their other limitations know that particular sound much better, and sound much more comfortable doing it.
'Waking the Demon’ wears its 80s thrash influences very much on its sleeve, having a sound much like Kreator at their peak or Exodus. It also has a distinctly metalcore sound, bringing to mind the Huntington Beach quintet Avenged Sevenfold.
The rest of the album follows a similar past. The band either spending time sounding much like themselves, or, more often than not, like the great bands they clearly aspire to emulate. The album closes with the much more mellow 'Forever and Always’, hard crunchy riffs without the obvious thrash influence apparent on the rest of the record.
It’s a good album, and nobody can say otherwise. Its got power, mixes up heavy thrash and melody, and has the potential to get Bullet to where they want to be, selling a couple of million records and headlining arenas around the world. Unfortunately, B4MV have veered away from what made them really original (although, what really is in metal these days?), and it could be argued the same has been done by other bands, and better. Still, the songs will sound great live. It’s a pleasure to have Bullet back. Now they
need album number 3 to be their Master of Puppets to make them as good in reality as they clearly believe they truly are.