Bullet For My Valentine - Venom

Published August 28 2015

*=Staff's pick	V No Way Out* Army Of Noise Worthless You Want A Battle? (Here's A War)* Broken* Venom The Harder The Heart (The Harder It Breaks) Skin Hell Or High Water Pariah

Genre	Heavy Metal	Matthew Tuck	Vocals
Tracks	11	Matthew Tuck	Guitar
Running time	41 Min.	Michael Paget	Guitar
Label	RCA Records	Matthew Tuck	Bass
Release	August 14, 2015	Michael Thomas	Drums
Country	Wales	-	Keyboard
Producer	Colin Richardson, Carl Bown
Similar artists	---

Welsh metallers Bullet For My Valentine releases their 5th full length record and the first without bass player Jason James, who got sacked earlier this year. After a few awesome releases early in the band's catalogue, a pair of records recently, 2010's Fever and 2013's Temper Temper, have made a lot of fans lose their faith in the band's ability to come out with fantastic stuff once again and at this point I believe that Venom is more or less a now or never record in terms of the band's future survival.

I like this album's appearance and its overall heavy sound, but at the same time I'm unable to find more than a few songs that supposedly could have made this album blossom into a blistering experience and pretty much the entire record runs in a gentle stream without any really contagious choruses. It's like they are trying to take chances, but don't know how much they should stay in known territory or spread into something unexperienced and therefore eventually end up somewhat disoriented.

You Want A Battle? (Here's A War) is the only song that I find really desirable, with No Way Out and Broken carrying their momentum as well, whilst the rest of the material sits safely behind the barricades just waiting to explode. It's neither great, nor bad, but as a whole, the band has definitely delivered more valid goods before and specifically when looking back at the earlier records. I would never say that this album is some sort of fiasco, but even if they are struggling hard to reach a highly sufficient outcome, in the end they can't execute on a large scale.

See also review of: Temper Temper , The Poison

Performance	Originality	Production	Vocals	Songwriting
6	5	7	7	5

Summary
6 chalices of 10 - Tobbe