"Fever" is solid, but nothing out of this world.
If Bullet For My Valentine’s second album, “Scream Aim Fire”, seemed a little off, a little too polished to you- you definitely weren’t in the minority. Given the excitement a lot of people showed after the success of their 2006 debut “The Poison”, the material on “Scream Aim Fire” seemed a little soulless in comparison and did fall down the charts a bit after it debuted at #4 in February 2008.
So, the Welsh band and the U.K.’s biggest hope for mainstream metal crossover stardom enlisted producer Don Gilmore (Good Charlotte, Linkin Park) to produce the band’s third album, “Fever”.
Throughout the ten songs on “Fever”, the album alternates between the raw energy of “The Poison” and the studio polish of “Scream”, for a solid effort.
Lead singer/ guitarist Matt Tuck and company do a good job of bringing the fury of the first album on songs like “Pleasure & Pain” and “Alone”, and at times shows the band back in strong form. The first single, “Your Betrayal” is a angry seething four minute hard rock jam custom built for request lines.
But the album could do without some of the slower tempoed material, like “A Place Where You Belong” and the almost Linkin Park soundalike “Breaking Out, Breaking Down”. Bullet doesn’t need to go stealing styles from other bands- I am sure they got plenty of their own ideas that fit into their own formula.
The final track “Begging For Mercy” gives some of the grit and promise that we saw on “The Poison”, and is probably the best showcase of Tuck’s screams and wails, but some of the listeners who heard some of the earlier material might have missed the song that late in the album.
“Fever” seems to be a compromising album- to appease fans of the debut, but not totally scare off the fans they made on the last album. “Fever” has its moments, but probably won’t keep the listener’s attention through the whole record.
