Thursday, June 16, 2011

TNM Review: Black Veil Brides - Set The World On Fire. It sounds how it looks.

Brings a whole new meaning to the word "flaming", doesn't it?
So I've been advised several times not to even bother reviewing this album by many readers and personal friends alike. "You're just going to think it's shitty anyways, you're not going to surprise anyone." Shows what you know, ass clown. What if I told you I fucking loved this album? What if I told you that this was hands down the best album of 2011? What if I said to you that Black Veil Brides were bringing heavy metal music to a glorious dimension of epic majesty that I never before thought possible? You would probably figure out immediately that I was full of shit. This album is gayer than a Mustang drag race. If you don't wear striped fingerless gloves, you shouldn't be listening to this sort of music; and if you do wear striped fingerless gloves, fucking stop it.

So I'd like to point out the positive first, because there hardly is any of it: the guitar leads alone actually sound alright throughout this album, and this is coming from a guy who has some standard in his quality of metal guitar playing. He's certainly no Christian Müenzner at any rate, but Jake Pitts is a fair lead guitarist in his own right, knows his way around a solo, which is a lot more than I can say for bands of a similar camp. So I'll forfeit BVB at least that much. However, I feel the exact same way about the guitar players of Ratt, Poison, and Warrant, and that didn't make them any less homo-erotic or shitty. BVB is essentially glam rock back with a vengeance. Only it's worse this time. We got this group of young gentlemen (a title I struggle to grant them) with well-practiced, respectable metal playing chops, who instead of using their musical ability to make good music, use it to make horrendous crap specifically designed to seduce brain dead high school girls, and more importantly, the bottomless wallets of their frustrated parents. I don't even want to see what the dudes who listen to this look like. Probably a lot like the fruitcups that play it.

There is one very significant difference between BVB and the glam rockers that predate them, however, and I will gladly attack it with all my strength, as I see it as their most glaring weakness. Sebastian Bach, Vince Neil, Bret Michaels, and Bon Jovi, flamboyant lip-puckering douchebags though they may have been, were all good singers. They had something called a "range", knew their way around pitch, and had enough power in their lungs to make the back row of even the most enormous of arenas moist in the undercarriage. "Andy Six" is a piss-poor, abhorrent fucking rock singer. He's truly terrible, and the band will be much better off replacing his whiny, nasally, tone-deaf ass sooner rather than later. BVB got their start as a croon the chorus, scream the verse buttcore band as we've heard so many times before, and Andy Six had the "skills" necessary to carry himself through that sort of bullshit at that time. That is no longer the case.


Set The World On Fire makes it apparent that BVB are trying to make the transition from dismissable cookie-cutter screamo band all the way to money-making cookie cutter arena rock that will eventually be dismissable until it's back in style again. As unlistenable as the latter form of music may be, it actually requires someone who has a voice that can carry itself, and fill a stadium. It is painfully clear throughout the album, that Six relies on auto-tuning to fix his fucked pitch, and I don't mean it in that goofy Attack Attack! sort of way where they use auto-tuning as a sound effect. I mean in the here-and-there underhanded "let's fool people into thinking this guy is a good singer" sort of way. Essentially the air-brushing of record production, it does little to cover up the zits and boils of Six's non-existent vocal skill. He is restricted to this same exact, low, harsh, pop-punk level teenage tone that remains fairly consistent from when you start the album to when you have the decency to shut it the hell off.

So let me lay out for you what my afternoon has been like:


Yeah sure, I guess it was kind of like the movie Crow with extra helpings of Hot Topic.

The track "Legacy" is probably the most metalcore of what this album has to offer. Oddly enough, this means that it's the song I found the most to like about. In the sense that when you're in a prison camp being tortured, you greatly favor bamboo chutes under the nails time, as opposed to car battery to the testicles time. STWOF's typical fare teeters more towards cuddly mainstream, easy-to-digest rock radio friendly riffs that would appease the most modern day of numb-skulled Avenged Sevenfold groupies. "Fallen Angels" for instance, seems reminiscent to me of Motley Crue's modern day anthem, "Saints of Los Angeles", with perhaps a bit more pep in its step, and of course, lacking of all the attitude:



So I know this sucks. You read my site on a regular basis because you're smart as shit, so I'll assume you think it sucks too. Why bother calling out these wannabe douchebags when you can smell their bullshit from a mile away without my assistance? Because regardless of the brilliance of both you and I as true metal warriors, not everybody can. When you're standing on the outside of the metal world, and you don't know any better, you will call this sort of thing "metal", and you will associate this sort of thing with "metal". It hits too close for home for me, and it's not something I can stand for. If you gave a shit about the quality of your favorite genre, you wouldn't either. This is a snippet from a review of this exact album by Jon M. Gilbertson of JSOnline:

"Amid a windswept deluge of twin-guitar harmonies, kick-drum fusillades and headbanging drama, lead singer Andy Biersack distinguishes himself with a relatively calm vocal approach. But generally, Black Veil Brides hurls itself down a path paved with the bootprints of men who strode toward a heavy-metal Valhalla. "Set the World on Fire" is practically a tourist's guide to the place."


I present to you: your tour guides to Valhalla.
Every time I write a review of this nature, several people go on about "what's the point?" or "who actually considers this metal?" The thing that none of you understand, being the under-the-rock, pop-culturally retarded, stone-deaf heavy metal kvlt kids that you are (god speed), is that a lot of people consider this garbage "metal". Whether it be the people who listen to it, or the people who don't know what metal really is in the first place. I'm on a mission here to fix all that. So far it's been going pretty terribly.


But rest-assured: I am one tenacious mother fucker. 


- Brenocide \,,/

Reviews still to come: new TBDM, In Flames, Red Fang and more!

43 comments:

  1. Ok, where is the bastard who used the words Black Veil Brides and Valhalla without "will never make to" in the middle of them? He obviously needs some ass-kicking. I can do fine with people liking or making this sorta stuff, but calling it the tour guides to Valhalla?!

    That's asking to be killed.

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  2. Great review. I thought the first song actually had okay parts (where Andy Six wasn't "singing" of course), but that second song was terrible. It's really gay that bands like this can become successful and hard working metal acts can go their whole careers under the radar.

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  3. Fruitcups .....LOL!!! XD..
    Kite i agree with you !! Someone is definitely asking to be killed.

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  4. Jesus tittyfucking christ on a pogo stick

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  5. Excuse my previous comment. It was rude, ridiculous and doesn't really mean anything.

    What I mean to say is that I've never seen anything this gay before ever.

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  6. I couldn't run a blog like this. Being exposed to so much poser metal on a regular basis cannot be healthy

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  7. The voice in the first video compared to the second video sounds like too completely different fucktards but with the same razored dildo in their ass. Not to mention the lip syncing is horrendous in the second one.

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  8. Eventually his exposure level will become too high and his hair will fall out and he will die

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  9. Just what we need. Poseurs listening to this and thinking they know all about our Valhalla.

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  10. the second song was better than the first but they both sucked ass

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  11. Why oh why did I listen? I was perfectly fine with some Agent Steel and then some old school death metal after that. Must rinse ears again.

    PS And eyes for that matter.

    PPS Some days I feel like denouncing metal as a whole so people won't associate me with that crap.

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  12. Definitely agreeing with Greg. Brenocide, you need to see a doctor.

    ...From the 1920s, who will just prescribe you 120 proof whiskey.

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  13. Man, you're right, That guy really can't sing.

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  14. kingcarcas13496/19/2011 3:39 AM

    Reminds me of the first time i heard A7X, generic riffing and vocals but people get all wet over it. I think it has to do with spending twice as much time on their makeup than they do on their music.

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  15. Scene kidz wannabe glam. Not to mention the riff in the second song, I heard it somewhere before.
    My only fear is that I will start seeing little brats dressed like these clowns with upside down crosses just to be like "yeeaaaa i look satanic and evil and my parents hate me for it".
    I would so smack them right in front of their moms if I see them.

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  16. I can't believe there has not been a point in the lives of these guys (girls?); let's say, getting those fucking haircuts, or tatoos, or hell, MAKEUP, or writing those songs, recording those videos, or any other fucking moment, in which they took a moment and thought "hey... what the fuck a m I doing?"

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  17. a band can't be liked for everyone and its not your taste. The bands you like people could say suck. Everything is different so there you go.

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  18. @Anonymous No shit you imbecile! That's like common logic, but that doesn't mean people can't bash the shit out of a band just cause others will like it. It doesn't make us assholes, we are just reviewing this from our own point of view, motherfucker!

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  19. Second top rated comment on Legacy video:

    "Jesus christ, if you're gonna say they suck so much, do some research first. Black Veil Brides made it to number two on the Itunes rock charts and number nine over all on the album charts. For a band you obviously have nothing on that's pretty good. Plus they have been selling show, after show out touring the country. So if you're going to say they suck, think of how many bands havn't even made it half close to where they are. Get a damn life." - Lexi67825

    That's just pathetic.

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  20. Is that a speaker he's singing in?

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  21. So I thought I'd check out some of their stuff on the Official Website. No dice. You have to pay to be a fan apparently. At minimum $10. And that only lasts you a year.

    Or you can opt to pay the $30 which gets you some guitar picks and dogtags, which I can only guess are used to identify the horribly burned corpses of their fans as mindless sheep that would listen to this tripe.

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  22. Way to twist your left wrist, throttle is on the right shit for brains.. Voldemort's nipple, this made me physically sick, disgracing satanism, bikers and heavy metal in one go, why oh why does this not qualify as treason? And the name is oddly fitting considering the spoiled little daddy's girls they are. I must now erase the memory of this atrocity through hours of heavy drinking and headbanging far too hard to persecution mania, unfortunately this is the price of "knowing thy enemy"

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  23. If I had known that dumb chicks got wet for this steaming pile of crap and its like, I swear I would have cross-dressed my way through high school.

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  24. I play in a band thats like GNR but a little heavier and these guys saying they are a modern day Motley Crue makes me want to go on a killing spree

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  25. I agree with everything this review says. I honestly have no goddamn clue how these douchebags even got famous. There's zero talent and zero originality in their music. Shit, if you can even call it music. I'm a fucking 15 year old girl but I can vividly tell what real metal is and these pieces of shit are nowhere near that. The only genre name they can fall into is "Wannabe Bullshit". End of fucking story.

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    Replies
    1. I totally Fucking agree and i'm 15 too. Asking alexandria is amazing. yuh gotta luv em'

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    2. >Asking Alexandria

      I think you're on the wrong Blog.

      Delete
  26. Fuck it all. Andy Sixx is attractive without all the glitter glam long hair shit. He's a gr8 performer but he can't sing to save his life. My 7 year old little sister sounds better than him. My suggestion?- Andy Sixx can be a f'n model. He can't sing for shit. He has the look but can't sing for shit. Asking Alexandria and Bullet For My Valentine are legit. Attack Attack is a lot better than BVB and honestly Caleb Shomo can sing his ass off, he's just not gud with holding the long transaction notes from screaming to singing! :p

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  27. I made it through 30 seconds of each song and had to put Solstice - New Dark Age on repeat for 3 hours to stop myself from ending it all.

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    Replies
    1. You are a good person. Best of luck to you, mate.

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  28. MUSIC CHANGES IDIOT!

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    Replies
    1. you mean: idiots (like yourself ) change music, right ?

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  29. f u guys black veil brides is great .. no doubt about it just because they are comfortable with themselves in public and aren't ripping on people behind a computer screen where no one can see how pathetic you really are

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    Replies
    1. i fucking love you dude! i agree :D

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  30. Hey! I just hope it's like you're about 13 and you gonna grow up. If not, you need a serious help dude! :D Cuz you're really insane. :D :D Sure, there are good and bad bands but why should one care? Normal mentally helthy adult whould just ignore the creapy stuff and concentrate on what he(she) likes. Why writte a dam stupid article about shit? Ohh, don't listen to this and this if you wanna keep being that cooool and badass guy!! Otherwise you are a sucking gey!! Hey you guys can always make my day! :D

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  31. yeah that was gayer than 8 guys fucking 9 guys

    Regain your collective manhoods by listening to the best band ever, The Chasm, gogogo.

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  32. Yeah that was gayer than 8 guys fucking 9 guys

    Regain your collective manhoods by listening to the best band ever, The Chasm, gogogo

    whoops didn't notice I had the option to just put a name

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  33. BVB will always be amazing no matter what. I love Andy Biersack in it. He is an amazing singer and an amazing person. BVB is all together the best band in my opinion. BVB Army.

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  34. The collective retarded hive mindset of anon is staggering. I think they found their way to the site from the YouTube videos.

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  35. Ok first of all. Black veil brides is a very deep band. Im sorry that its not AHUADUDUAHUSHUH like y'alls music is. We all have our opinions but when really they aren't gay (fact) So get off of your asses and actually put your mind in the music. They are the most down to earth people you can ever meet. Im 13 okay? I love them. They have helped me through a lot. Fuck all of y'all who call them gay. They aren't. They have a heart unlike most of y'all.

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  36. holy crap.
    wheres my TYRANTS BLOOD to wash this filth off....

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  37. BVM arePoser Goth kids...

    The sad thing is, they have talented musicians in the group, they really do. But together, they blow ass.

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All readers that post under the name "Anonymous" and are too frail and weak to represent themselves properly with a title, shall be deemed false metal poseurs for the remainder of their pitiful existence.