Applicability: Happy Song deliberately invokes this, the song has lyrics like "But if you sing along a little fucking louder to a happy song, you'll be just fine cause every now and again we get the feeling, and the great big void inside us opens up" but thanks to its Nu Metal sound it's left ambiguous if it's a song about how music can help us forget about our problems and telling the listener to stay strong while facing them or if any attempt of optimism in the song is supposed to be sarcastic.
Each album put out breaks the base a bit more, but then came That's the Spirit... Oh, dear god.
Forget the reaction to That's the Spirit, the base breaking somehow became more intense with amo.
Out of all the songs on amo, the completely unexpected electropop trance number "nihilist blues" is perhaps the biggest cause of Broken Base in discussions regarding the band's post-That's the Spirit sound. Some parties say that it's one of the band's best songs ever; others mark it as the definitive point in which they stopped being good. Both parties agree that it's utterly unlike any song they've made before — and that's before taking into consideration that parts of the song were lifted straight out of an Evanescence song (a fact which the band themselves admitted). Needless to say, it is probably one of the most hit-or-miss songs in their discography.
Common Knowledge: Rumors have persisted that the reason why the band stopped playing their early deathcore material was due to Oli damaging his vocal chords. Truth is Oli can still do his earlier harsh vocals just fine. The reason behind the Lighter and Softer direction they took in the mid 2010's was purely creative and wanting to explore other styles of music.
Critical Dissonance: They are praised highly by musicians and critics, but not even getting praise from Rob Halford (yes, the Metal God himself) seemed to stop them from being hated by at the very least half the metal fanbase.
Crowning Momentof Heartwarming: Although the video for "wonderful life" is inherently ridiculous, Oli and Jordan's segments are both just them spending quality time with their family.
Dead Horse Genre: In an interview, Oli Sykes said that Deathcore has become one, hence the band's Genre Shift to Metalcore for Suicide Season. They would later cite this as the reason for them abandoning metalcore completely for a radio-friendly electronic rock sound.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While certainly popular in the UK, their American fan base might be even bigger. And yes, they're big in Japan too. They're also quite popular in Australia, with their last 3 albums all debuting at #1 on the album charts there.
Growing the Beard: Each and every album by them is better than the former. There Is a Hell... There Is a Heaven has been lauded as this by journalists. Sempiternal even more so. Of course, whether That's the Spirit continued the trend is still being debated.
Harsher in Hindsight: The song "Deathbeds" is a duet between Oli and his then fiancee Hannah Snowdon about how they would spend the rest of their lives together... except their marriage lasted a little over a year before Oli apparently caught Hannah cheating on him (she, in turn, accused him of repeatedly cheating on her, and abusing her as well).
Hilarious in Hindsight: All the hate they received from metalheads for not having a "masculine" enough image sounds hilarious today since the band's association with the "Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer" and the "Gigachad" memes, the latter in particular being instead the memetic epitome of masculinity.
He Really Can Act: It took four albums, but Oli finally sang clean vocals on Sempiternal. It was worth the wait.
The opening of "Can You Feel My Heart".Explanation Around early 2021, the song went viral on TikTok for its use in clips of various shows and movies of people falling from major heights. But it would gain more notoriety when it was used for the "Average Fan vs. Average Enjoyer" memes. In a way, it has also been a theme (alongside "PHONKY TOWN" by Playaphonk) for the famous "Giga Chad" meme.
Whenever Oli's growls/screams/whichever would revert back to his regular voice on Count Your Blessings.
Oli's high-pitched and edited scream near the end of "Kingslayer".
Never Live It Down: Oli actually makes a speech during the Wembley concert that he's not too happy playing either of their first albums anymore, but they then play "Pray for Plagues" anyway. They'll still play it once in a while, if the crowd nags them hard enough.
Older Than They Think: Contrary to popular belief, BMTH weren't the first metalcore act to start tinkering with ambient, electronica, and post-rock elements. Arguably they perfected the formula, though.
Rahzel of The Roots fame on "Heavy Metal." Even Anthony Fantano was caught off guard with that feature.
Averted with Grimes with her feature on "nihilist blues" off of amo.
Also averted with BABYMETAL's feature on "Kingslayer."
Rescued from the Scrappy Heap: Over the years, BMTH accomplished this for themselves by way of maturing and refining their sound, and as of now, they are considered a very mature and nuanced band with a strong sense of song craft. In fact BMTH is currently considered one of the most innovative and experimental metalcore bands in general as of Sempiternal, and is probably one of the genre's biggest Ensemble Darkhorses.
The Scrappy: They are currently one of the most hated bands in the metal scene, if not one of the most hated metal bands in history. It's very hard to find a metalhead trying to defend them, and even harder to find one who admits to being a fan. You'd think that as a band that so few metalheads claim to like, that they'd get less recognition. The reason behind their strong Hatedom does not seem to descend from their music itself, but from their image, since metalheads tend to hate metal-influenced bands with a non-masculine image, and their fanbase (as female listeners of heavy metal music have a much harder time being taken seriously as fans, and that goes doubly so if the members of that heavy metal band are the slightest bit attractive).
The verses of "nihilist blues" (especially the second verse sung by Grimes) sound eerily similar to "Never Go Back" by Evanescence — so much so that Evanescence themselves ended up filing a lawsuit against which the band willingly lost, which is why both bands now share songwriting credits for that track in particular.
Wangst: A common criticism of their lyrics, which is ironic as they became less and less Wangsty after Suicide Season.
Win Back the Crowd: After the polarizing receptions of That's the Spirit and amo, they finally managed to reunite the fanbase with Post-Human: Survival Horror, an EP that some may even consider their best work since Sempiternal or even their best work in general.
The reason behind the Lighter and Softer direction they took in the mid 2010's was purely creative and wanting to explore other styles of music.
Hatedom does not seem to descend from their music itself, but from their image, since metalheads tend to hate metal-influenced bands with a non-masculine image, and their fanbase (as female listeners of heavy metal music have a much harder time being taken seriously as fans, and that goes doubly so if the members of that heavy metal band are the slightest bit attractive).