BMTH music video analysis

Bring Me the Horizon – “Go to Hell, For Heaven’s Sake”

“Go to Hell for, Heaven’s Sake” by ‘Bring Me the Horizon’ (BMTH) features on ‘Sempiternal’. Sempiternal is the fourth studio album by British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon. It was released on 1st April 2013 worldwide through RCA, a subsidiary label of Sony Music Entertainment. Vocalist Oli Sykes’ lyrics for this song were inspired by his atheist views and an encounter with somebody who had a differing viewpoint.

The video is performance – concept as it features cuts between shots of BMTH performing in a church, an ironic setting, and shots of and close ups of numerous things that may seem dangerous or appear creepy/frightening (e.g. animals – particularly insects and predators, guns, guillotines, blood etc.), close ups of eyes to convey extreme emotions (fear) and there are frequent references to religion – specifically Christianity through the use of the Crucifix. Some of these images are repeated to emphasise the theme of the song.

It conforms to Andrew Goodwin’s theory of a stereotypical performance in a rock/metal music video. It also supports his idea that there are intertextual links and references to horror films – at some points in the video there is a girl dressed in white with long black hair covering her face, a reference to “The Grudge” (2004 horror film). The low angle shot (below, right) is a typical convention of a horror film to make the audience feel afraid of and inferior to the antagonist. The jump cut from the shot prior to the shot shown below (right) creates tension in the same way as a typical horror film.

When the lyric, “I’m bleeding out every word you said” is sung, an image of blood dripping is shown to illustrate it (below, left). This contradicts Goodwin’s theory as he mentioned that there are rarely visuals that that directly and literally point to the lyrics. Red is a typical representation of and immediately associated with danger, devils (below, right) and Hell. This once again expresses the theme of the song in which Jesus and his association with Angels and Heaven is contrasted with the idea of Hell and rebelling against Religion.

Goodwin mentioned that there is intertextuality in music videos as audiences enjoy knowing the ‘in-joke’. This is very prominent in ways in the video because other than showing references to horror films, at the end there is an image of a raven. This could be linked to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’, a masterpiece heavily associated with the gothic. Their target audience may like Edgar Allan Poe’s work as he is primarily very gothic. It also links to the Ravens at the Tower of London which represent oncoming doom and disaster.

There are other gothic references such as dark magic, voodoo dolls, exorcisms and what looks like clairvoyance.

Other aspects of mise-en-scene in the video such as the black clothes (costume) the band are wearing, also link to a heavy metal genre of music, as well as a horror film genre in which the antagonist is usually wearing a dark costume. This represents the band as antagonists or ‘villains’ (Propp’s character theory) – their audience may also represent themselves as one of Propp’s characters depending on their moral, cultural and social morals/values. The lighting in the performance sections are quite bright (high key), but the concept sections are very dark in contrast to this. This low key lighting set doesn’t show much of what is going on, and this leads the viewer to ask questions and acts as an Enigma code (Barthes Codes). The members of BMTH are a stereotypical representation of a metal band as they wear leather and have lots of tattoos which are typical rock genre characteristics. The majority of the props shown are either Crucifix’s in the concept section or the band’s instruments (electric guitars, drums) in the performance section. There are also shots of candles which are very atmospheric and could suggest an idea of an exorcism or something similar. This suggests that the theme is quite heavy and probably more likely to attract a male target audience. The performance is set, ironically, in a church which is also symbolic because the song is about rebelling against religion.

This ironic setting will be influential in how the audience read the video. A preferred reading would be that the band might want Christians to be shocked and offended by the video. An oppositional reading would be from the perspective on non-religious people (Atheists) who would be shocked at the idea of rebelling against the system.

There are similar contradictory/ironic motifs that run throughout, one of these is at the end where there are visuals of stone angels which represents the idea Heaven rather than Hell.

The theory of Barthes codes can be applied to the music video, more specifically the Cultural code. As previously mentioned many times, the main theme throughout the video is the idea of going against and rebelling against religion. To some extent this reflects the idea of the large majority of teenagers aged 16 and over (their target audience) in the UK, where the band was formed. The video displays several images of Jesus on the Crucifix and Crosses burning. These images reflect the band’s ideals and morals.

The technical aspects of the video also reflect the theme. The black and white static effect throughout the video suggest a melancholy, gothic and depressing atmosphere. There is also a white noise filter which makes the video looks edgy and like a rock video. The shaky camera movements reflect the loud, heavy beat of the song. All of the camera shots are short and fast paced, keeping in with the fast beat of the music and hectic/loud nature of the song. The extreme close ups of eyes, dead animals and living insects cut out a lot of the image behind it; once again adding an enigma code as we do not see the full picture of what is happening.

There are lots of abstract images (realism) and the imagery is also very graphic – animals fighting/dead animals/small insects, and this natural side of the video feature edits from different mediums such as documentaries. This suggests that there is a lot of truth behind the song and lyrics.