When Bring Me The Horizon first announced their seventh studio album, POST HUMAN: NeX GEn, it was originally meant for release in September 2023. The second instalment in their Post Human series, NeX GEn had big shoes to fill as it followed the critically acclaimed 2020 Post Human: Survival Horror. But after keyboardist and producer Jordan Fish left the band in 2023, the band were forced to rethink their plans and postpone the release of NeX GEn. The result? A string of singles released over the course of a painful three-and-a-half years. That is, until the 23rd of May 2024, when the band announced they were going to be surprise-dropping the album the following day.
So when the release of an album has been delayed countless times, a key member of the band leaves halfway through making the record, and with the album already toured well before its release, how good can it really be? The answer: surprisingly good.
BMTH are a band that refuse to stand still. From the deathcore of their debut album, Count Your Blessings, to the metalcore of the ever-popular Sempiternal to the electronic pop-rock of the controversial amo, BMTH might not always get it right, but what they refuse to do is stay put and rest on their laurels. NeX GEn is no different. A dynamic and complex mélange of Oli Sykes’ characteristic post-hardcore vocals, glitchy electronica beats, touches of hyperpop, and a healthy dose of pop and rock, had any other band released NeX GEn, it’d be hailed as a radical 180-degree shift in sound and direction. But this is BMTH—of course each release is going to be different.
The inconsistent quality of its songs means it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Survival Horror
Considering the disjointed release this album had, the resulting body of work is surprisingly cohesive. With each track blending seamlessly into the next, the songs on this album work satisfyingly well with each other, something which wouldn’t have been obvious listening to its six wildly different singles.
The transitions between songs are flawless. The spoken-word eulogy at the end of ‘R.i.p. (duskCOre RemIx)’: “We will start today’s ceremony with a few words from our dear friend” flows brilliantly into ‘AmEN!’, an unlikely collaboration with Lil Uzi Vert and Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo, where Sykes’ guttural screams open the song with “I hope you have fun rotting in hell”. Similarly, the transition from ‘YOUtopia’ to ‘Kool-Aid’ is so smooth it’s impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. It’s clear the band intended NeX GEn to be listened to in full, but this is where the album falls short—for all its strong points, the inconsistent quality of its songs means it doesn’t quite reach the heights of Survival Horror.
NeX GEn is less of a misstep and more of a sign of Bring Me The Horizon’s ambition
NeX GEn boasts some of the band’s best songs—‘Kool-Aid’ is a roaring earworm of a song that flows flawlessly between hardcore verses and pop-rock choruses, ‘LosT’ is a frantic hyperpop-flavoured banger, and ‘LiMOusIne’, featuring Norwegian art-pop singer Aurora, joins the long list of BMTH collaborations that should not work on paper, but very much do.
Another standout is ‘n/A’, where Sykes, at his most introspective, reflects on the despair and hopelessness he felt during his struggles with addiction. The song also features the lines “Hello, Oli, you fucking knobhead / Did you think you had us fooled?” sung by a chorus of fans’ chants recorded during their NeX GEn January UK tour. Straddling the line between heartwarming and cheesy, the line is a welcome memento for those who attended the tour. Like ‘sTraNgeRs’ and ‘DIg It’, ‘n/A’ sees the band lean into a more acoustic, ballad-like sound that has been largely absent from their discography thus far.
However, other tracks, such as the album’s many ‘[ost]’ interludes, fail to leave such an impression. Instead, these melt into a grating, overproduced blend of tinny electronic noises, thumping beats, and spoken word that fail to add much to the album as a whole. For an album that is made to be listened to front to back, there are far too many skips and filler tracks. And with the last minute of ‘DIg It’ being almost entirely silence, it’s easy to see how the band could have shaved ten minutes off the album and still had an equally strong—if not stronger—body of work.
And while new tracks such as the bombastic, emo-adjacent ‘Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd’, ‘LiMOusIne’, and ‘R.i.p. (duskCOre RemIx)’ are very welcome addition to BMTH’s repertoire, another of the album’s pitfalls is the fact its best tracks were released months, if not years, prior to the album’s release, making the release of NeX GEn fall ever-so-slightly flat.
NeX GEn is less of a misstep and more of a sign of Bring Me The Horizon’s ambition. However, with two instalments still left in the Post Human series, the band is sure to keep evolving and experimenting as they have done all these years and continue to reach new heights.
Recommended listening: ‘LosT’, ‘Kool-Aid’, ‘DArkSide’
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