Bullet for My Valentine’s Matt Tuck: Metal Has Become ‘A Bit Stale’

The time has come to break the heavy metal mold ... at least where Bullet for My Valentine are concerned. In a new interview with Metal Hammer, Bullet for My Valentine vocalist Matt Tuck admits to tossing aside a lot of material for their new album fearing that it treaded too familiar territory.

Tuck says that while recording the album, he felt the metal genre around him had grown "stale." He explains, “I am never going to turn my back on metal because it’s been my life for 20-odd years, but for me, as a songwriter in the genre, it’s all gone a bit stale. I’ve got to an age now, 38, where unique instrumentation and the way albums are produced and written has become more appealing to me. Someone like Muse’s Matt Bellamy can take a guitar and turn it into anything he wants it to be."

Tuck credits a bit of the shift to their new drummer Jason Bowld, who spent 18 years in industrial-turned-electronic outfit Pitchsifter. “Looking back, they were so ahead of their time, it’s ridiculous. They were just a bonkers band that incorporated a lot of electronic and different musical and percussive styles, to make interesting, heavy and exciting music," says Tuck. “It’s a little bit of that flavor that we wanted to incorporate. We wanted to make something that was the complete opposite of Venom."

He later added, "Being in a metal band and watching 100 other metal bands, everyone’s using the same kind of techniques, scales and guitar tones – genre-standard things. For this new record, we’re trying to be different."

The band covered Imagine Dragons' "Radioactive" for the deluxe edition of their new album. Time will tell how fans take to the band's experimentation. The Gravity album is out now, and fans can catch Bullet for My Valentine on tour at these upcoming stops.

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