It’s fair to say Bullet for My Valentine have quite a bit riding on fifth album ‘Venom’. After the release of their first three albums, they were seen as the bright hopes of British metal. Their thrashy yet poppy approach to Welsh rock, more in line musically with James Hetfield than James Dean Bradfield, propelled them into arenas and high slots at the UK’s major rock festivals. But 2013’s poorly judged fourth album ‘Temper Temper’ was a backward step at a bad time in their career, the lowest point ‘Tears Don’t Fall 2’ the slightly saddening sound of the band trying to recapture former glories only eight years after their debut.
In 2015, when their venue sizes are shrinking from arenas to academies and rising British bands such as Bring Me the Horizon start to challenge their reputation, the aim for the first time is not to keep rising upwards, but to recapture some of that upward momentum urgently.
Urgency, thankfully, being something that is plastered all over first song ‘No Way Out’. Singer Matt Tuck’s lyrics have never been Dylan Thomas levels of Welsh poetry, (“Trying hard to heal as the pain pours out”), but that does little to weaken the big hooks of what is a highly promising comeback single. The pace remains in gear V for ‘Army of Noise’, ‘Hell or High Water’ and high point ‘You Want A Battle (Here’s A War)’, all of which see some of the best guitar work of the band’s career, even if contributions of new bassist Jamie Mathias are minimal in a band that never gives much of a spotlight to bass guitar. There are moments where you think you’ve heard things before, (even the title brings ‘The Poison’ to mind), but this album was never so much about moving forward as moving back to a place where they can. For an album with that focus, ‘Venom’ goes about things the right way.
Time can only tell if ‘Venom’ is indeed the rebirth of Bullet for my Valentine. While weak lyrics and an overall lack of progression stop it from being a truly great comeback, there are enough big choruses and flashy guitar moments to let listeners know that the band are, in places, still capable of inspiring quite a bit of excitement. Something that couldn’t have been said as little as two years ago.
ALEC EVANS