I realize it's easy to mock Bullet For My Valentine. But as I stood there in front of the stage, watching their lead singer emerge in leather jacket and V-neckline like was he on his way to casting in a remake of Twilight, I had to surrender to it: There's a special kind of cringe that's so convinced of its own toughness that it becomes entertaining.
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Disclaimer: Apropos Magazine received access or a review copy. As always, we share our own impressions — unfiltered.
Six stars
The Copenhagen audience is not into cheating. You can feel it right away. Either you have something on your heart — or you stand there sweating in your backstage branded merchandise and trying to fake it. Bullet For My Valentine lands somewhere in between. Their biggest sin is probably not that they play rings -- they don't -- but that they think they're playing metal when in reality they should be playing on The Voice's high school tour in 2009.
They open with “Your Betrayal,” and the whole stage is wrapped in smoke machines, fire and guitars that look more dangerous than the music sounds. The lead singer, Matt Tuck, tries his hand with hard looks and outbursts of anger, but it feels tacky. It's not anger, it's anger cosplay. And when you call something “a fuckin' banger” onstage, and it then turns out to be “Tears Don't Fall,” a song that sounds like a Nickelback ballad infused with eyeliner -- that's when you start looking for the exit.
But here's the interesting thing: works yes still. The crowd -- especially the younger ones -- sing along, raising their hands and jumping along as if they had tickets to Bring Me The Horizon in the Royal Arena. Because Bullet still has fans. A lot of them. And they know how to play their part, even if it's with the same conviction as a man in a Batman costume on Strøget.
The band sounds tight and they are skilled. You can't take that away from them. They know their audience and deliver the goods. The problem is that the item feels more like the gift box from Matas than the raw metal Copenhell is otherwise the guarantor of. There is a lack of nerve. There is a lack of bias. There is... missing... all that makes metal dangerous and alive.
The whole thing is most reminiscent of a metal band that would like to do stadium pop but still wants to be in the cool club. And even though they're technically knocking loose with huge profits, it feels like they're standing and playing for a mirror, not for an audience.
Let's just put it like this...
Bullet For My Valentine is like a can of Red Bull for a whisky tasting. It showers, it makes noise, and it gives a quick kick. But when the party starts in earnest, they are already on their way home with the makeup running and a slightly blank look in their eyes.
