REVIEWS IN BRIEF: BLOOD RED THRONE’S COME DEATH AND BRING ME THE HORIZON’S COUNT YOUR BLESSINGS
For better or worse, I had the same reaction to two recent death-metal releases from Earache: “Meh.” Maybe I’m just burnt out right now, but neither of these albums exactly knocked my socks off.
First we have Count Your Blessings from Bring Me the Horizon. If you’re into deathcore along the lines of All Shall Perish, Despised Icon and their ilk, I guess you could do worse than Bring Me the Horizon – but you could probably do much better, too. Vince and I saw a band called Born of Osiris play with At All Cost a month or so back, and other than the fact that every member looks like he’s about twelve years old, I think they show a lot of potential – there’s a lot of killer breakdowns and some cool shit going on with the synths. Also, I think I’ve made it pretty clear by now that I’m rather fond of Arsonists Get All the Girls.
Bring Me the Horizon have some decent breakdowns – I especially like the one towards the end of “Tell Slater Not to Wash His Dick” (and I have to wonder to which Slater the band is referring – A.C. or Christian?) – but nothing to distinguish them from the pack. Count Your Blessings ends up being kind of an exercise in good background noise then – if I was, say, cleaning my apartment and I just needed something playing in the background, I think that Bring Me the Horizon might be good to have around. Not exactly high praise, I’m aware, but hey, it could be worse.
Blood Red Throne don’t have a lot going for them that Bring Me the Horizon don’t – except that instead of deathcore, they play somewhat more old fashioned, somewhat melodic Floridian-style death. It’s all very proficient and dare I say, for the gazillionth time, crushing – but if it inspired Morbid Angel-like fervor in anyone, I’d be kind of surprised. The problem, I think, is that there are no new tricks here; you could play me this album and tell me it’s any number of bands, and I wouldn’t believe you. Still, it’s all very… proficient.
Count Your Blessings:
(two and a half out of five horns)
Come Death:
(three out of five horns)
-AR
