Everyone remembers the album that changed everything for them. Mine was Count Your Blessings.
I was 16 when Bring Me The Horizon released their debut back in 2006. Up until that point, my idea of heavy music was Linkin Park, Slipknot and whatever happened to be blasting out on Kerrang! TV after school. Then along came five lads from Sheffield making the most chaotic racket I’d ever heard. I didn’t understand half of it, but I knew I loved it. Looking back now, it’s hard to think of another album that’s had a bigger impact on my taste in music. Count Your Blessings was the record that sent me down the rabbit hole into deathcore and extreme metal, and I’ve never really looked back.
I’ve grown up with Bring Me The Horizon ever since. I’ve watched them evolve from one of Britain’s most divisive deathcore bands into one of the biggest and most adventurous names in modern rock. Every album has taken them somewhere new. Some fans jumped ship when they moved away from deathcore, while others discovered them because of those changes. I just enjoyed the ride. Through all those reinventions, Count Your Blessings has remained the record I hold closest. Not because it’s their best album, but because it’s the one that started it all for me.
The biggest issue with the original was always the production. The songs were there, but they never sounded as massive as they felt. Guitarist Lee Malia’s riffs lacked the bite they deserved, drummer Matt Nicholls’ playing was often swallowed by the mix, and everything felt buried beneath a layer of mud. It almost became part of the album’s identity, but I’d always wondered what these songs would sound like if they were given the production they deserved while keeping that raw mid-2000s deathcore spirit intact. That’s exactly what Count Your Blessings | Repented sets out to do.
In interviews surrounding the release, frontman Oli Sykes explained that the goal wasn’t to modernise the album. Instead, the band wanted to create the version they always felt they should have released back in 2006. To make that happen, they enlisted producer and Humanity’s Last Breath guitarist Buster Odeholm, whose mix somehow manages to make everything sound enormous without sanding away the rough edges that made the original so exciting.
The difference is obvious almost immediately. Lee Malia’s riffs finally have the weight and clarity they’ve always deserved, while Matt Nicholls’ drumming punches through with a power the original never quite managed. Whether that’s down to subtle tweaks or simply because you can finally hear every kick, blast beat and cymbal crash hardly matters. It just works.
Oli Sykes deserves plenty of credit too. He’s spoken about having to relearn the vocal techniques he used nearly twenty years ago, and the effort has clearly paid off. His vocals sound every bit as feral as they did in the band’s early days. If anyone still questioned whether he could pull off this style anymore, Repented answers that within minutes. The addition of the brand new closing track, “Dehumanized”, is another smart touch. Rather than feeling like a bonus track bolted onto the end, it genuinely feels like the bridge between where Bring Me The Horizon started and where they are today.
Of course, a better mix doesn’t suddenly rewrite the songs. Count Your Blessings is still the sound of a young band throwing every idea they had at the wall. Breakdowns, blast beats and chugging riffs come thick and fast, and there are points where tracks begin to blur together. Some transitions remain every bit as abrupt as they were back in 2006, and listening to Repented made me realise that not every issue I had with the original came down to the production. Some of it is simply the songwriting. There are brilliant ideas here, but they’re not always fully realised. Even so, the highlights have never sounded better.
“Black and Blue” still feels completely unhinged in the best possible way, constantly shifting gears without ever losing momentum. “(I Used to Make Out With) Medusa” and “Tell Slater Not to Wash His Dick” still contain breakdowns that make you want to throw yourself around the room like you’re back in a sweaty local venue in 2007. Those moments haven’t aged a day. If anything, they hit even harder now because the production finally gives them the room to breathe.
The thing I kept coming back to while listening was how familiar it all felt. Not because it sounds identical to the original, but because it sounds the way I always remembered it sounding. Memory has a funny way of filling in the gaps, especially with albums that shape your teenage years. Somewhere along the way, I’d built this ideal version of Count Your Blessings in my head. Somehow, Repented sounds remarkably close to that version. That’s probably the biggest compliment I can give it.
Re-recordings often feel unnecessary, and more than a little cynical. This doesn’t. It has a genuine reason to exist. It respects the original instead of replacing it, polishing the rough edges without sanding away its personality. The scrappy 2006 release will always have its place because that’s the album that introduced so many of us to Bring Me The Horizon.
Twenty years on, I’ve finally heard Count Your Blessings the way I always imagined it sounded back when I was 16, discovering deathcore through a pair of cheap headphones after school. It doesn’t erase the original, nor should it. Instead, it stands alongside it as the version many of us have been hearing in our heads all these years.
More than anything, I hope Repented isn’t just a celebration of the band’s past. I’ve genuinely enjoyed every era of Bring Me The Horizon, from deathcore pioneers to arena headliners, but hearing them embrace this level of heaviness again is a reminder of just how good they are when they let loose. I’m not asking for a full return to 2006. They’ve evolved far too much for that, and that’s exactly why they’ve become one of the biggest rock bands in the world. But if whatever comes next carries even a little of the aggression, urgency and unpredictability that made Count Your Blessings so special, then I’ll be first in the queue.
Because if Count Your Blessings | Repented proves anything, it’s that Bring Me The Horizon have never lost that side of themselves. They simply chose the right moment to remind us it’s still there.
Author: Terry, Kingston Store
