Single Slam – Piece of Me by Bullet for my Valentine (Gravity)

Bullet for my Valentine have released their second single from their upcoming album. The new song is called Piece of Me and it will feature on the album, Gravity. Gravity is due for release on the 29th of January via Spinefarm Records.

Bullet for my Valentine have already released one single from the new album. That one is called Over It. You can read our thoughts on it here. I wasn’t that impressed. Over It represented the first bit of new music from BFMV since 2016’s single Don’t Need You and 2015’s album, Venom. In between Venom and now they have had a few line up tweaks and signed a new record deal with Spinefarm.

The 2018 version of Bullet for my Valentine is founding members Matthew Tuck on lead vocals and Michael Paget on guitar and backing vocals. On bass is Jamie Mathias, who replaces Jason James. Finally, on drums is Jason Bowld who replaces Michael Thomas.

Bullet for My Valentine are a big band. They are popular and have a huge following. I have never been one of them. I often find their music to be overly polished, bordering on emo, very commercialised and lacking in raw power and creativity. To be fair to them, I haven’t really given much of their music a try. A few of their “hits” were enough for me. One in particular stands out and is a song I loathe in “Tears Don’t Fall”. Not knowing much of their music overall made me quite intrigued to see how much they had, or hadn’t change dover the years when I approached Over It.

I left that disappointed but here we go again. Let’s give Piece of Me a try and see if I can take to this any better. Piece of me is 3 and a half minutes long and I am pleased to find it is a faster, more rock based track. It doesn’t start well, at all. A sample synthesised tone with some weird effects over a vocal line of “Give Me A Reason”. It’s horrid but thankfully over quickly as with a shout of “Why I Should Give A Fuck” kicks the song into gear.

We get a nice crunchy riff and fast drum beat intro now before they suddenly stop and let it die out. Just like in Over It, the guitars basically disappear and are replaced with mellow, clean vocals over a programmed line with a decent drum beat. It sounds soft and lacks and bite. A sung line breaks up the almost rap like vocal delivery and slowly the guitars start integrating back into the music in time for the chorus.

The chorus is interesting. It kind of feels out of time and disjointed but in a creative and exciting way. The clean vocals are still there and are delivered at a different tempo to the riff and drums and it is quite catchy. The second verse carries the exact same pattern as the first though we can hear a guitar in the background now. The intriguing chorus comes back in before we move to a melodic instrumental section which is a simple guitar tone, a soft drum beat and some gang vocal styled ‘woahs”. This leads into a nice heavy section with lots of bass and powerful drums that lead back into another chorus. As the track prepares to end we get one more breakdown which is nice and heavy through to the close.

I much prefer Piece of Me to the first single Over It though that isn’t saying much. There are decent moments on here I enjoy. The chorus is pretty cool and there are some heavier breakdown styled sections to let loose to. I don’t like the brief but electronic start to the track and I don’t get the obsession with dropping the guitars out of the verses. Generally this music is guitar driven so I am going to struggle when they are not involved. It is still highly polished but over all, not a bad track.

Check out Piece of Me for yourself on Bullet’s YouTube channel here. It is available now on all the usual streaming services too. You can also grab this, and more from the band at the links below. You can also preorder Gravity from here. Keep up to date with news on the band and the new album at their website, on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram by following the links.

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