When it comes to amazing albums of the years Welsh thrash metal outfit Bullet For My Valentine have delivered more than a few over their time. The Poison is one of the best debut albums from a band ever while it’s follow up Scream Aim Fire frequently makes music critics Top 100 Heavy Albums lists right around the world. Well now Bullet have stunned us yet again with an album that can only be called an absolute classic – Gravity.
Despite being around for nearly 15 years now this is the album that can pretty much be considered a coming-of-age album for the band. See Gravity is the album where the band have decided to step right out of their comfort zone, of writing damn good thrash metal, and decided to do something a little different. And this is not something just a little bit different… this is something very different as the band decided this time around they wanted to change their sound.
Now for the older fans of Bullet that are probably thinking ‘oh no is this some kind of Linkin Park style change?’… relax because the band have done what Chester and co should have done and that is better infuse their new sound with their old sound. I won’t lie the new more electronic sound that the band has brought in is there from the opening bars of opening track ‘Leap Of Faith’ but it then is followed up by a true infusion of the band’s old sound pushed along by a strong melody.
One of the major themes of this album is the struggles surrounding the break-up of a relationship and that becomes brutally open apparent with the first single off the album “Over It’ which is destined to become an anthem for all disgruntled lovers out there. That is followed by the similar sentiment in ‘Letting You Go’ which contains the lines ‘you want to hate me, you want to love me… I’m letting you go,’ and it is then very easy to see that Gravity is an album that is not only very personal but is at times written from a very dark place.
Bullet For My Valentine also find the right mix of tempo with Gravity. Slower tracks like ‘The Very Last Time’ and ‘Breathe Underwater’ are the right kinds of ballad – they maybe slow but are brilliantly written and in this case really inspirational. Then there is the pure aggression of ‘Piece Of Me’ while ‘Under Again’ and ‘Coma’ again celebrate that classic Bullet sound. Perhaps the standout on the album though is the amazing ‘Don’t Need You’ which sees that the old and new sounds come together as Matt Tuck’s screams once again remind us why he is one of the best in the business.
Gravity is a truly amazing album. While Bullet For My Valentine may have gone into the studio with the idea to create something new what they ended up creating was a brilliant album that already deserves to be called a classic. The mix of some electronic sounds creeping into the thrash ends up creating a new sound that shows that while this is experimental it is also one of the best albums of 2018.
