REVIEW: Bring Me The Horizon - Count Your Blessings | Repented

lAst GEn

42:06 // July 10th, 2026 // RCA

Regardless of what you think of their current trajectory and status as one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, for those of us introduced to Bring Me The Horizon via their debut full-length (when our hair was bigger than we were) it’s heartening to see BMTH haven’t shunned their origin story. By taking their most technical, immature, and rough-around-the-edges record and conservatively reimagining it, the outfit has clearly gone to great lengths to realise the album they wanted to make way back in the MySpace glory years of 2006, having spent years lamenting the original’s production (or, as frontman Oli Sykes eloquently put it during a Suicide Season-era interview: ‘Our last CD were shit…’). Unsurprisingly, expectations surrounding Repented since its announcement have been high, both from older fans wanting to re-live the days when their side fringe didn’t double as a combover, and, to a lesser extent, newer listeners curious to experience the band’s launchpad with twenty years of hindsight and modern production propelling it. On both fronts, this re-engineered nostalgia machine can tentatively be called a success, albeit one with some fairly glaring caveats.

Given CYB’s pedigree of puerility and unrelenting heaviness, it’s fair to say that musically it didn’t reinvent any wheels. It felt like a bunch of Sheffield teenagers trying desperately to convince the world they’d just crawled out of a Swedish crypt, albeit in a very cute and comparatively accessible way. Chord-liquefying vocals, kickdrum abuse, breakdowns every thirty seconds, a surprising affinity for melody and generalised At The Gates worship coursed through the experience, and although clumsy, as a mission statement it showcased bags of intent with a personality inseparable from both the songwriting and its gloriously scrappy production.

That personality is precisely where Repented stumbles.

In addressing virtually every criticism levelled at the production on the original, BMTH have inadvertently swung so violently in the other direction that much of the album’s identity has been polished away almost entirely. The guitars lack the high-end bite that gave the original its wiry menace, and have now settled into a flatter, more generic modern deathcore tone that is inferior in almost every way. The percussion possesses significantly more depth and punch, but also sounds so immaculately triggered and inhuman they now feel like an exceptionally expensive one-man bedroom project. Oli’s vocal technique may have immeasurably improved over the subsequent two decades, but hearing 2026 Oli try to imitate 2006 Oli is far less convincing than the throat-shredding gremlin-core found on the OG. With Sykes and guitarist Lee Malia wearing producer’s hats alongside Humanity’s Last Breath mastermind Buster Odeholm, Repented falls foul of that most garish of all production faults: overproduction.

Whether through double-tracking or denser layering, Oli’s re-recorded vocals alongside the album’s generally fuller presentation creates an artificial weight that doesn’t equate to the tantrum heaviness found on the debut record. Additionally, the low-end feels strangely anaemic, resulting in a texture that removes a great deal of dynamism and causes many passages to fall into that same homogenised wall-of-sound trap that plagues a great many modern deathcore/ metalcore releases, particularly the hyper-produced, suffocating variety that Odeholm himself has helped popularise. CYB wasn’t heavy because it was polished — it was heavy because it sounded ramshackle and like it was held together by prayers and sticky tape; every clipping, phlegmy retch, every muddy guitar tone and every overzealous blastbeat contributed to an atmosphere of barely-controlled chaos. Repented tidies all of that up for sure, but mistakes apoplectic volatility for a flaw rather than recognising it as part of the LP’s appeal and enduring charm.

That said, some aspects are elevated substantially by the overhauled production, notably the breakdowns — which is extremely fortunate, because this album has more breakdowns than my first year as a parent. They now feel uniformly impactful, weighty and cataclysmic in all the ways a good breakdown should, every spaced out chug or stuttering groove compounded into convincing, tangible force. ‘‘Braille’’ offers perhaps the clearest example, its revised snare tone turning the central whirlwind into something that now feels properly ugly in all the right ways.

Elsewhere, the guitar solos throughout are served tremendously by the emphasised high-end in the cleaner mix, and give the sweepy technical dexterity room to breathe where previously they were all but swallowed by the rumbling deathcore backbone. The riffs, which remain the most interesting and exciting of BMTH’s career, likewise receive their moment in the spotlight: the widdly lick on ‘‘Black & Blue’’ has never sounded so satisfyingly groovy. New closer ‘‘Dehumanized’’ is a relatively serviceable signoff that, with the exception of its unmistakeably 2020’s-era chorus, could easily have passed for a leftover from the original recording sessions. Unfortunately, it also embodies much of Repented’s broader shortcomings, saturated in the same glossy thickness that blankets the record. It ultimately feels less like a natural extension of CYB than a bonus track from NeX GEn, since while it may not conform to the general sound of that LP at large, it nonetheless traffics in the same kind of anthemic brainlessness in its chorus, and would have served the band better as a mere nod to the early days on its own terms rather than ostensibly a hanger-on to wrap up their nostalgia exercise. It’s hardly a dealbreaker, but it neatly encapsulates the slightly confused philosophy underpinning this project as a whole.

Despite all of these reservations, it’s difficult not to enjoy Repented, particularly for those of us whose nostalgia for the original borders on obsessive. The improvements over its 2006 counterpart may be marginal, but it bottles its essence well enough and its rewritten aspects feel inoffensive so as to not cause too much of an eyebrow raise, leaving which version is superior almost entirely a matter of personal preference. The bottom line, however, is that while the album is technically better, it’s sacrificed a great deal of its built-in character to get there, feeling neither as heavy, nasty or bratty as the original recording: all facets that lent it a begrudging charm. CYB was never a masterpiece, but it was through this charm that the majority of its content was held aloft… now that’s been removed, we’re left with a clean-sounding, modern deathcore experience that sounds largely indistinguishable from many of its contemporaries. In filing away the rough edges, Repented stands as a cleaner, tighter, and arguably more accomplished effort, but also a curiously anonymous one — it’s ironic that in attempting to perfect one of deathcore’s messiest cult classics (fight me), BMTH have disposed of the very qualities that made it worth revisiting in the first place.

7/10