Bullet For My Valentine’s new album Temper Temper starts off like a bullet to the brain with the first song Breaking Point. It’s loud, no it’s very loud, the guitar strings are being put to the test with the stress of the hard playing, and the drums had to have holes pounded into them by the end of the song. That was my second impression on the song, my first being, “Ahhh, I got my volume set on high”, then I moved very quickly to get my headphones off my head before I started hearing ringing. If you can’t tell by those details, Bullet For My Valentine is a heavy metal band that does what all heavy metal bands do, play loud, fast, with vocals that involve a lot of yelling.
Here’s the thing though, as much as I like heavy metal, it still needs to be just as flowing and meshing as a dance song would be. No one can be expected to have a smooth dance if the rhythm of the music don’t work and how can I bang my head when I hear instruments that speed while vocals slow me down? Most songs it sounded like lead vocalist Matt Tucker was spitting out his words rather than singing them. What I didn’t like the most about his vocals though was how he would constantly change his tempo and volume throughout the songs. One phrase he sings fast and loud, then he’s down to a slower more even level, then back to loud but still a little slow, or low level with the drawn out key, and so on. If the vocals had kept with one main rhythm and level with fewer changes I would have enjoyed the songs more.
Temper Temper’s downfall however was not that the vocals sounded more like a start up heavy metal band instead of a 14 year old band, but the one song called Dead to the World. I’m guessing this was their slow song for the album but all it does is kill all of the momentum that was being built from the other songs. When I listen to heavy metal I want to feel like my brain is going to expand in my skull while I thrash it about until it feels like it might leak out of my nose. What I get when listening to Temper Temper are songs that make me do the yes, yes I agree, I’m listening, but I just want to talk head nod instead of the head banging, eyes closed thrashing I want to do. Riot has some of that sound in it and at times I could hear the band wanting to put that energy in the songs but it just don’t happen. Temper Temper sounds like it wants to break out with loud, fast, high intensity songs, but then it pulls itself back in only giving just enough to reach the edge but not going over it and when they finally do put it out there, it's just too late.