Rockers pick up your picks and prepare for the latest oversight on the newest album from Bullet From My Valentine. This album’s release date was August 14th, 2015 and the album’s name “Venom” explains itself due to the metalcore/ metal punk dark melodic sound and its brutal instrumental breakdowns.  BFMV originated from south Wales and started the band among childhood friends. Popular in the mid 2000’s this band is famous for its revolutionary twist of punk and metal music and for its vocalist and guitarist Matthew tuck for his fierce and raw vocals. BFMV has produced a number of albums and most if not all were extremely liked by the fans. BFMV’s inspiration has mostly been an outlook of what the bands going through and thinking when writing music. The latest album Venom was originally a follow up after their 2nd latest album Temper Temper. In the making of the new album Venom, the bass player “Jay” left during the making and in May the band released that the new vocalist/bass player would be Jamie Mathias.

Although impressive in this reviewer’s eyes, most music critics opposed of the new album for its originality and its “let down” towards a new era for this band. “ This album made me go back to a couple of dark places” says Matthew Tuck as he explains his reasoning behind the album. “This album is without a doubt our heaviest and complex album yet and I’m very proud of its outcome”.  

The album starts off with the intro song “V”. This puts the listener in more of a unforgiving/ run -up mood to start off the album. Then the album plays “No Way Out”, “Army of Noise” and “Worthless” which is somewhat odd due to its earlier release in London. These songs have a more complex structure on all levels: anything from the lyrics that include large amounts of solid screams and dense lyrical meaning to its complex double pedal and symbol remakes these songs are more on the top five on this album.

Next, we hit the climax and the most popular song  “You Want a Battle?” which consists of chorus vocals and exploding beginning and finish. This song replicates the prior feelings and songs on their earlier album “Scream Aim Fire”.

Later in the album, the songs “Broken” ,“Venom”, and “The harder the heart” starts with more of a softer and instrumental hear to it. Consisting of strung out power chords and its powerful vocals these sounds shows the bands confusion and mixed feelings. These songs were released after the London festival and were released on the album later before the release.

The rest of the album contains six more songs like “Playing God”, “Parish”, “Raising Hell” and more. These songs strongly influence the more rational thinking of the bands view of their life and outlook in the world. Shredding guitar solos and hard hitting drums these songs are not quite the best in the album but they are always an awesome experience. These bunch of songs oddly resemble the musical sound of their more earlier album “The Fever” which was one of their most popular album.

In conclusion to this whole album I feel that the album did not live up to its reputation of a “revolutionary” change for the band. However, in spite of its promises it’s still way more complicated and more dark than any of the other albums. Venom shows promise for the band’s future and maybe not the start to a new, but an enlightenment to the band itself. Most critics gave this album a six out of ten and 70 out of 100. I give this album a nine out of ten for its raw instrumental and vocals. Also for the meaning of the album, it’s not easy to lose a band member and produce the same metalcore/punk metal sound without the original crew.