Читать книгу Bullet For My Valentine - Scream Aim Conquer - Ben Welch - Страница 11
ОглавлениеThe band were only to complete one final EP as Jeff Killed John and this time the roots of the band that` they would become were absolutely undeniable. The self-titled release from 2003 features a whole range of melodies and lyrics that would later show up on Bullet for My Valentine’s debut EP and album, though in a much altered form. It opens with ‘Our Song’, a number with a crushing chorus and plenty of athletic drum fills from Moose, as well as an atmospheric breakdown with a creeping groove, though it’s not a huge step forward from the material that they recorded with Greg Haver.
The next track, however – called ‘Routine Unhappiness’ – showed that they were really getting to grips with the mechanics of writing a catchy rock song. Pivoting on an off-kilter riff, the vocals are pushed right to the front of the mix and Matt pulls out every trick in the book in his performance to sell the sordid tale of domestic abuse to the listener, with his gutsy singing line breaking into a scream at various points. The guitar work is held back to give space for the singing to properly take centre stage and the song’s middle eight lifts off with a wordless refrain of ‘whoah-ohs’. Even in this most raw format, it sounds as if it’s destined to be played in rooms larger than a community centre. It’s rough and unpolished but there’s no doubt that the boys were starting to feel and sound like a band with big ambitions.
The third track, ‘Nation2Nation’, features a guest appearance from a certain Benji Webbe – the vocalist of Skindred. The band had been formed in Newport in 1998 after Webbe’s previous project, Dub War, had languished on Earache Records, forcing him to reconfigure the line-up and start a new project. Their debut album, Babylon, was released in 2002 to a positive reception, with critics praising the release for its fresh and unfiltered take on metal – in addition to the blazing riffs and pneumatic drums you’d expect from a solid heavy album, Babylon incorporated a bold streak of reggae and dancehall, with Webbe’s highly versatile and distinctive vocal the focus of their hybrid approach. Webbe had first fallen in love with both punk rock and reggae at school (when his friends were all announcing their allegiance to this tribe or that with their dress sense, he just wanted dreadlocks with a mohawk in the middle, he told online fansite Metal as Fuck). It’s a testament to his support for the scene that, despite being an RCA-signed artist at this time, he was still helping out unsigned acts in the area and his work with up-and-coming Welsh acts continues to this date, in addition to regularly touring with Skindred.
‘Nation2Nation’ opens with the sound of a siren, a sample heavily used in dancehall, before a cyclical riff kicks in. The verse sees Matt incorporating another nu-metal rap, as on ‘You’ – it’s a product of the era that the EP was produced in but it’s pulled off with gusto nonetheless. The chorus is pure vitriol, with traded screams pinging back and forth over the driving riff, and Webbe appears in the second verse, stealing the show somewhat with an elastic vocal line combining death-metal growls with the rhythms and inflections of Jamaica. It’s a fascinating experiment in playing with the Jeff Killed John style that, despite not having a lot in common with JKJ’s future approach, does show that the band were more than prepared to explore unfamiliar territory with their music – a trait that would last throughout their career.
The track is important in the Bullet for My Valentine story for another, less apparent reason. Skindred signed to RCA Records and released Babylon in July 2002 but in November of that year two of its founding members had left – the drummer, Martyn Ford (better known as ‘Ginge’) and guitarist Jeff Rose (also known as Jeff ‘Death’ Rose). In detailed joint statements, Ford in particular cited mistreatment at the hands of RCA, writing, ‘After recording our stunning album Babylon and doing some amazing shows seeing the reaction from people to our music I knew we deserved to be treated much better than the way we had been by RCA, the label total [sic] didn’t push the band or the album in the way a major label can when they believe in it.’ Both members instead decided to pursue a career in recording. Ford had set up a makeshift studio beneath a boxing gym in Newport to track the demos for Skindred’s debut and, experiencing Pro Tools (a digital audio workstation) for the first time after recording Babylon in Hollywood, he saw his future. Upon leaving Skindred, he decided to found his own recording studio. The result was Not In Pill, in Newport, and the first band to record there were Jeff Killed John. It was the start of a longstanding creative collaboration that would last throughout Bullet for My Valentine’s career (Ford would also go on to work with Slipknot, Trivium, As I Lay Dying and many more).
Around this time Jeff Killed John had also recorded a track that will be familiar to all and it is another example of how far they had developed in the craft of writing songs. Opening with a simple acoustic-guitar part accompanied by a vocal, ‘All These Things I Hate (Revolve Around Me)’ shows a band that know how to structure a composition, with each vocal line carefully designed to stick in the listener’s head and with the lyrics clearly audible. While the drumming and guitar work is still prominent, it’s in service to the emotional tone of the song. Matt was developing as a lyricist too and had the smarts to write songs around highly relatable themes, such as the collapse of a relationship.
But if Jeff Killed John were experimenting with a more accessible and approachable take on their sound at this time, they weren’t about to go full pop, as the next track on the EP demonstrates. Entitled ‘Misery’, it opens with an extended instrumental section, a pensive guitar line underpinned by a spartan drum part from Moose, which also forms the basis for the melancholic verse. But all hell breaks loose in the chorus, which also shows just how strong a scream Matt could pull out at this time.
While the Jeff Killed John EP shows that the band were, if not ready to blow, at least making significant strides, the truth was that all was not well around the period that this EP was recorded. Although South Wales was well and truly under scrutiny from the industry, all the increased pressure was causing some discontent in the Jeff Killed John ranks. They were broke and in debt. Outside of the nurturing scene within Wales, they were regularly getting involved in pay-to-play shows, whereby bands have to pay some sort of fee upfront to the promoter to get on the bill, usually with the promise of compensation if enough punters come through the door. Their commitment to the band had seen all of them, at one time or another, lose a job.
Plus, seeing other local bands get snapped up by majors was causing something of a crisis of confidence. ‘We just kept thinking “what are we doing wrong?”’ Padge revealed to Ultimate Guitar. ‘All these bands were getting signed up and we’d been going just as long, if not longer than some of those bands and we couldn’t figure it out.’ Things were about to get worse. The band was gearing up to enter the studio but bassist Nick Crandle decided he had had enough. ‘We were due to go in the studio on Saturday, and he quit on the Friday,’ Matt told The Gauntlet website. ‘Everything went completely tits up.’
