Maximum Metal Rating Legend

BanYou have to love the timing of these things. Bullet for My Valentine releases their fourth career album, ‘Temper, Temper’, a week before Cupid’s favorite holiday. The Welsh act have toured all over, received heaps of industry praise and spent a great deal of time just figuring out where to put all the money. The last record, ‘Fever’, was their best-selling and charted at third on Billboard. Three years later and here’s another one that may do just as well monetarily. Yet, for me, this is the weakest of them all. I can take the childish lyrics, love lost, broken heart stuff almost all day, but man there is some poorly written stuff permeating through this full-length. Amorphis isn’t afraid to do it. Blue Oyster Cult and Aerosmith do it. Just get outside writers to prune, re-write, or re-imagine it in a better version. "Temper, Temper, time to explode, feels good when I lose control”. That’s a chorus that effectively ruins what is the best riff I’ve heard in years. Even as bad as the writing is...man it’s hard to turn it off. The title track has a stop and start with the aforementioned riff and just sounds bombastic. “Breaking Point” is a rowdy opener that is par for the course. I love the cymbals and some of the isolation on that main riff. I’m liking “Tears Don’t Fall (Part 2)” as much as the first one and depending on your copy, “Not Invincible” makes my band playlist near the top. The majority of the rest is just passable at best. I have no desire to hear “Riot”, “Dirty Little Secret”, “Leech” or “Saints & Sinners” again. Like ever. Even with that being said,the stuff that Bullet for My Valentine does well, they really do it well. I’m still on board so far.