There Is a Hell Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is a Heaven Let's Keep It a Secret - Bring Me The Horizon
There Is a Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There is a Heaven Let’s Keep It a Secret (or what I’ll refer to as There Is a Hell for the rest of the review) released October 10th, 2010. It’s an album that sees Bring Me the Horizon fully depart their Deathcore sound and instead enter their Metalcore era for the next few records. I distinctly remember when this album was about to come out, I saved up my money so my two best friends and I could run to Hot Topic and grab this CD as an early birthday gift to myself. We rode our bikes back to my house, popped the CD into my PlayStation 2 (that was my house CD player at the time), and cranked the volume, pissing my mom off in the process (which was always a personal win). Eventually, my friends went home, but I spent the night listening to the album on repeat. I was enamored with what I was hearing. For a long time, this record ended up becoming a core part of my music identity and even overtook Count Your Blessings as my favorite Bring Me the Horizon record for a long time. I even used “Alligator Blood” as a vocal warm-up song when I was the singer of a band in high school! As time pressed on and I found new artists, my obsession with the record faded, but coming back to it 16 years later brought me back to the moment I first listened to it. This was another record that as the years passed, I took out of my rotation. It fell by the wayside not because of a loss of love, but just more from getting sidetracked by all the other great music released over the years.
Something I instantly noticed during my first relisten is that There Is a Hell is insanely catchy, melodic, but still a heavy Metalcore record. The band is now widely known for writing catchy choruses and verses, and it honestly started with this record in my eyes. “It Never Ends”, “Alligator Blood”, and “Anthem” are specific examples of songs that have so many catchy moments that are sure to get stuck in your head for a few days. As for melody, there are countless sources, from the guest vocalists to the string instruments, and finally, the expanded use of keyboards compared to Suicide Season. I also noticed that some songs have more of a groove to them rather than just focusing on pure carnage (check out “Blacklist” and “Blessed with a Curse” to see what I mean). The songs on There Is a Hell also lean on the lengthy side, but they’re structured and written in a way that they don’t feel like they’re dragging on or meandering. Instead, the tracks feel more purposeful, with the album feeling more hyper-focused than their previous records while also being an excellent concept album that explores the ideas of Heaven/Hell, religion, and addiction.
The guitar tone on There Is a Hell, as well as the riffs, is now what I would consider a classic Metalcore sound. This sound was achieved in part thanks to the addition of rhythm guitarist Jona Weinhofen of I Killed the Prom Queen fame – a seasoned Metalcore guitarist by this point in his career. The writing on the album across all band members feels the most technical up to There Is a Hell’s release, with the band seemingly still having something to prove. The songs may be longer, but they’re tight, experimental in many spots, and polished. Oli’s vocals on the record are the only component that can be questionable at times. His low screams are still great, but it sounds like he relies a lot on the yelling vocal style I talked about from Suicide Season for the mid-range in places where maybe he would have preferred clean vocals but wasn’t quite ready or able to be a clean vocalist like on later releases. In a recent interview, Oli admitted that he was mostly tone-deaf until around the Sempiternal album, so that would certainly explain why he didn’t try to tackle cleans here. I also believe this was around the time Oli was starting to have some vocal issues due to heavy drug usage at the time, which he also talked about recently. Despite this criticism, the vocal style feeds into how personal the writing and performances are on this record, reaching a greater level than the previous two records.
I highly suggest you give the whole album a listen, but you definitely need to check out “Anthem”, “It Never Ends”, “Fuck”, “Home Sweet Hole”, and “Alligator Blood” at the very least. I had such a great time rediscovering these tracks, as well as all the others, and intend to throw them back in my rotation! Now, get ready for the next chapter of my Bring Me the Horizon | In Review series next week, where I’ll be checking out Sempiternal – a record that I didn’t give the time of day back when it was released. I can’t wait to see what my thoughts on that record are after all these years!