The girls are the real winners in Bring Me The Horizon’s post human world

Bring Me The Horizon’s latest body of work, ‘POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR’ dropped this Friday to an eagerly-awaiting audience in high anticipation of what the formerly-metal-but-currently-genre-transcending band had in store for their newest endeavour.

Having already satisfied a few appetites with a string of heavier singles released off of the EP over the course of a few months, it wasn’t too difficult to gauge the tone of the new project and its mark of a return to their more metal roots.

Whilst the standalone Bring Me The Horizon (BMTH) tracks on ‘POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR’ are monumental on their own, the record is largely carried by the scale and variety of its collaborations; three out of four of which are female.

And while this shouldn’t necessarily be noteworthy, in a genre typically dominated by men, a well-established band willingly sharing their platform and amplifying female talent is a pretty big deal. More so when it becomes apparent that the songs with female guest features are the most interesting on the EP, with the girls stealing the limelight as Bring Me The Horizon take more of a backseat in their own work.

Each of these collaboration tracks is markedly unique from the next, playing on the strengths of the guest features and the expertise they bring to the table as they mould the sounds to their own genres, from the chaotic J-pop metal intensity of ‘BABYMETAL’, nu metal genre-transfusing slickness of ‘Nova Twins’, and gothic melancholy of Evanescence’s ‘Amy Lee’.

The first of these team-ups comes from BABYMETAL with ‘Kingslayer’ – the most instantly-gripping and unexpected track on the EP. If this is what the post-human world sounds like, I want in. A rush of video game-esque adrenaline combined with pulsating electronic metal riffs, the pace is relentless from the first wave of synths. BMTH’s Oli Sykes’ accusatory growls are offset and overshadowed by the innocent child-like vocals of BABYMETAL’s Su-Metal, bringing a depth of regal control to the hectic Mad Max energy of the song.

This is followed by ‘1×1’ featuring British alt-grunge-metal duo, Nova Twins, seamlessly sonifying the self-destructive nature lamented in the lyrics through an accessible mainstream chorus, diversified by the accompanying heavy metal hip hop riffs and nu metal attitude. ‘1×1’ reads like an internal dialogue, with its introspective vulnerability carried by Amy’s vocal strength as Nova Twins confidently carve out their own space in the track and dominate from the moment they emerge.

The biggest change in pace on the album comes from Amy Lee on the cinematic closing track ‘One Day the Only Butterflies Left Will Be in Your Chest as You March Towards Your Death’, as we come to end of the post-apocalyptic theme of the EP. Lee is eerily ethereal, with hauntingly breathy vocals carrying like whispers in the wind. There’s only one word for it: stunning. The track also brings out the best of Sykes’ clean vocals, with the frontman and frontwoman complementarily conversing back and forth like a couple meeting their demise as the song draws to a theatrical close that hints at something more, but falls short at the very last second, like an unfinished story.

With the promise of a further three EPs on the way, it’s hard to predict what might come next from Bring Me The Horizon, but with a humongous roster of talent out there, I can only hope it’s more collaborations of this sort.