Album Review: Bring Me The Horizon - That's The Spirit

Obviously, Count Your Blessings came out a while back (Oct 2006). But when you consider the sound of That's The Spirit, Bring Me The Horizon's entire discography — save for Sempiternal — feels like a lifetime ago.

Tunes like Happy Song might carry traces of alternative rock and groove metal, but the band's focus has certainly shifted towards ambient soundscapes with an emphasis on rhythm. Experimentation is the name of the game on this record, with every track featuring at least one or two elements that stand out as inventive or otherwise unexpected, from the backwards string sections that kick off the album to the looped, percussive vocal fills that crop up here and there. The singles — Drown, Happy Song and Throne — provide a few decent reference points for the album's sound, but the sheer scope of the band's experimentation really needs to be heard to be believed.

The shift in tone for both the band and Oli Sykes' vocal style makes for essentially no throwbacks to the band's earlier material. However, the album's sombre atmosphere, jagged tempo shifts and dark-as-death lyrics elevate it to a new degree of heaviness, even if it isn't delivered the old-fashioned way. At times, Bring Me The Horizon's ambitions overtake their compositions and they fall into a "heavy-chorus light-verse" formula as they attempt to reconcile their influences. That said, the whole thing begins to come together towards the second half. This album will divide fans, but the band won't be on the losing side.