Bring Me The Horizon - Sempiternal

I haven't been listening to Bring Me The Horizon for that long, and it took me a while to decide that I liked them. But of recent, I've decided they're definitely brilliant, and the reason for that is their newest album, Sempiternal - or Sempiturtle, if you prefer.
"Sempiternal" is an actual word, it turns out; "an archaic English word denoting the concept of 'everlasting time' that can never actually come to pass . . . from the Latin word 'sempiternus'." (Wikipedia, obviously). What I've heard about the meaning behind the album so far is that it's supposed to be a collection of different stories and meanings, and it definitely sounds like that to me. I've been listening to it a lot. A LOT. A STUPID AMOUNT. It would be an understatement to say that I really like it. I like it so much that I need to say a lot of stuff about it, and I wasn't sure what. But then I remembered that I have this blog and it'd be pretty good to put on here.
Anyway, to the album!

It kicks off with one of my favourite songs off the whole album, Can You Feel My Heart. The creepy beeping at the start, and the echoes are amazing. Then the beat kicks in and it just gets amazing. And then on top of that, you get Oli's vocals and they're just wonderful, and they sound so raw and real. I love the line "I can't drown my demons, they know how to swim". Excuse me for a second while I turn this up to eleven.

The next song, The House Of Wolves, has some awesome guitars, and changes the previous mood of loneliness and isolation for this vicious fury and growling - appropriate when you consider the song title. It sounds like being on the hunt. I don't know if it's because of the Shadow Moses video, but the whole album reminds me of snow. This song reminds me of these huskies I saw when I was on a skiing holiday in Bulgaria. I went on a sled ride and they were pulling me along, and there was this absolutely crazy one that kept biting at the snow as it ran, and this is like its theme tune.

Then we get onto Empire (Let Them Sing). It starts with Oli giving this frantic, paranoid warning as the music builds up behind him, and then kicks in, and it's like a battle song. "The deeper you dig, the darker it gets . . . the wolves are at my door . . . are we truly alone?" It's like a conspiracy theory set to music. Again with the wolves. BMTH like wolves, don't they?

Sleepwalking's another of my favourites. It starts off with that spacey video-game sort of noise, and then (trying so hard to not say 'it kicks in'). Well. It sounds like panicking, and being trapped inside your own head, and trying to break out. I know that feel. "Should I sink or swim? Or simply disappear?" I like how it sort of morphs between the aggressiveness of the main song, and the sort of spacey, disoriented bits. Makes me wish I could sing properly so I could join in with this properly.

Next is Go To Hell, For Heaven's Sake. It sounds like hatred to me. All the horrible things you think about people when they do something and your view of them is just shattered and trodden into the dirt, and you're so repulsed that you're trying to get as far away from them as possible. Hatred and betrayal.

Now it's time for Shadow Moses. This is the first released single off the album, and it's been a massive success - it's made it to number one on the Kerrang! Rock 100, a position last held by Welcome To The Black Parade, of My Chemical Romance fame. It sounds very desolate and alone and resigned. It starts with that ghost-like murmuring, and then Oli's, "Can you tell from the look in our eyes? (We're going nowhere)" and then some fucking bad-ass guitars. Wow. Just wow. I really really want to sing along to this, but I'm playing it through my headphones, and I think the neighbours might object to me smashing things and shouting "THIS. IS. SEMPITERNAL." at five past one in the morning. (I'd put the video in here, but the only available link to it is the one that's apparently unavailable for UK residents . . . FFS, they're from Sheffield)

After that awesomeness comes And The Snakes Start To Sing, with a quiet and solemn start. Oli's a very good singer. So far it's making me think of some kind of dark Victorian alleyway at night, full of murder and evil deeds. It's quieter than Shadow Moses, and provides the necessary cooldown from it while still being just as powerful and emotional. The lyrics read like a plea for help, sat in the bottom of a very dark pit and calling out for someone to save you from yourself, but also like the people you need to save you are the very people drinking the blood from your veins. In the last minute it becomes drastic and dramatic and even better than before. This might be my favourite track on the album, I think. Wow.

Seen It All Before comes afterwards. Sad and lonely, it sounds like losing love. Like looking at someone and just feeling a blank void where there used to be an emotion, and having to come to terms with it being there instead of living a lie. I don't know, this is just what it sounds like to me. I've stayed away from interviews so that my impressions aren't tainted by trying to fit what I see into what the band have said about the meanings behind the songs.

Right back in with the anger on Antivist. It feels like the lyrics are practically being spat at me in frustration. It's a defiant song, quite literally "middle fingers up if you don't give a fuck", a call to arms to stop just keeping your head down and obeying The Man, to not just do stuff because someone higher up has told you to, to stop just pleasing everyone else all the time, and also swearing a lot.

Crooked Young starts off very dramatically with the (I'm presuming here) violions. That was a typo, but I'm sticking by it, 'cause this song's got claws (hahaha, thank you very much, I'm here forever). A very religious song - or at least, a song about being deserted by religion, or it never being there at all. "Fuck yourself, the faceless won't save you, the clouds won't hear your fucking prayers". I don't know anything about the band's religious beliefs, but it doesn't sound like they're massively pleased with God. This song's sarcastic, and so venomous towards religion and that expectation that if you just get on your knees and close your eyes, you'll be saved.

And now, the final song. Hospital For Souls starts with Oli Sykes talking over more ghosty noises that gradually grow and intensify, and then BOOM the guitars and the drums, and the high-pitched siren noise, like some sort of air raid. Then a pause, a calm in the storm for Oli to start singing. It sounds like the kind of song a ghost might sing. But not a happy ghost. "Everybody wants to go to Heaven, but nobody wants to die". It sounds like a person who felt too desperate to wait long enough to queue up for Heaven, and has ended up in Hell instead. It's constantly switching back and forth between the anger and fury and flames, and this even darker quietness. It's like someone who's given up.

It's not an album you might want to listen to if you're in a fantastically wonderful mood, but if you like dark, dystopian stuff like me, then this should be right up your street. Lucky for you, it's out now, so you can go and buy it straight away.