BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE Is Working On 'Very Heavy,' 'Very Technical' And 'Pretty Brutal' New Album

BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE frontman Matt Tuck spoke to Rock Sound about the progress of the songwriting sessions for the band's follow-up to 2018's "Gravity" album. He said (see video below): "We've never had this much [material] at this stage pre-recording. There are seven [songs], I think, which are finished — in my eyes, anyways — vocals and everything, demoed up and ready to go. So it's good. We've got a good head start. And then this [coronavirus pandemic] happened, and it's kind of stopped the train. So it's not ideal, and we did have a lot of plans for the rest of the year for writing and making the record, which are on the backburner now until further notice. It's not the end of the world, but we're really glad now that we took the time last year and the beginning of this year to write and record a demo rather than just sit on our asses, like we are being forced to right now."

"Looking back at the last year, and then taking the decision to take this year off to write and record, take our time, don't rush anything, was the best decision the band could have made," he continued. "'Cause we don't have any of the touring headaches that a lot of bands have that obviously had festivals booked this year and touring schedules, and it's just stopped all of that. So we're lucky in the sense that we don't any of that going on, but it's still kind of spoiling the flow factor that we had six weeks ago when things were on fire again and we kind of have to put the brakes on for a bit. But it's okay — we'll be fine. We weren't scheduled to start making the record till September at the earliest anyway. So we'll just see this out and do some writing in the meantime."

Asked about the musical direction of the new BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE songs, Matt said: "It's pretty brutal, to be honest. It couldn't be more of a contrast with 'Gravity' in a ferocious style. It's very technical. I don't know why. You've just gotta go with what you wanna go with — as a band, as a musician, as a songwriter, you've just gotta go with what's floating your boat, and this time around, the heavy stuff is just coming out in masses. The riffs are crushing. There's probably 60 percent aggressive vocals, 40 [percent] clean, which is a ratio we've never really dabbled with before. It's very heavy, it's very technical. For the BULLET fans out there that kind of like that side of this band, it's very cool and very exciting. It feels good."

According to Tuck, the initial studio sessions for BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE's next album are being overseen by Carl Bown, who previously worked with the band on "Gravity" and 2015's "Venom".

"It's just good to have him onboard during the writing process," Matt said. "We have got plans to work with other people later in the year, and that was all kind of ready to go, but we're not sure where we stand with that now because of schedules and [the coronavirus-related delays] having a knock-off effect and [us] not being able to start probably till 2021 now. We just don't know if we wanna wait that long. So we may have to kind of let that go, which is a real shame. I don't wanna say anything just yet, in case it still does happen. As it stands, we've just been demoing and writing, and that's me and the band and with our friend Carl Bown."

Two years ago, Tuck told France's Loud TV that BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE "tried to elevate the band's sound" on "Gravity" "to a completely different level. We experimented with layering different guitars and guitar-sound stuff, and it just didn't have the same effect. So we took that decision to start experimenting with synths and electronic software and stuff like that," he explained. "And, yeah, it was an interesting experience; it's not something we'd done before, so we were kind of learning as we went. And we just had some fun with it and got weird with it and freaked ourselves out with it and then got it to a place where it is on the album now, which… It doesn't really take over anything; it's just kind of layers of sound backing up the riffs and the drums, really, so I think we've used it in a way which won't freak people out too much. It's definitely there, and it was something that we were very careful that we didn't overcook. But I think we've got a really good balance, and it just accentuates the band's parts even more."

"Gravity" was released in June 2018 through BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE's new label home, Search And Destroy, the imprint launched in 2014 by Spinefarm and international artist management company Raw Power Management.