All Buildup, No Climax

Welsh rock quartet Bullet for My Valentine try their mightiest to reinvent “hard” on their second album, Scream Aim Fire. The metalcore rockers, who have moved from their origins of covering Metallica songs to writing their own pieces, abandon the catchier choruses of their 2006 breakthrough album The Poison and instead employ a much more up-tempo sound coupled with both old-metal influences and a current political agenda.The titular opening track is the kickoff single for a reason—it’s the premiere of their attempt at a new style, tying title and lyrics together without strict verse-chorus-verse structure. The song is put together better than some of the following tracks, although the intro doesn’t compare in the slightest to the headbang-worthy second track “Eye of the Storm.” The album as a whole provides a good amount of head-thrash potential, but some songs in the middle of the album lose their appeal less than a minute in.

Ending track “Forever and Always” shows the most emotion of all of the songs, an entirely different atmosphere where the lyrics are more cooed than screamed. While most other tracks suffer from being overly lengthy for metalcore songs, this song’s loving nature and what almost seem like handclaps towards the end maintain listener interest for the duration.

Scream Aim Fire shows far more individuality and personal influence by the band members on the music than The Poison possesses, but it still falls short of being anything you will want to keep on repeat for years to come. The Slayer, Megadeth, and Metallica influences are all clearly evident, but the staying power of those bands has yet to show up in any Bullet work.