Matt Tuck From Bullet For My Valentine On Metalcore: ‘I Don’t Think It’s A Dirty Word At All’

In a new interview, Bullet For My Valentine frontman Matt Tuck has embraced the “metalcore” label, a term often used derogatorily by some, stating that he doesn’t view it as a “dirty word at all” and is proud of the musical movement his band helped pioneer in the early 2000s.

Speaking with Australia’s Wall Of Sound, Tuck reflected on the era that saw his band rise to global prominence alongside acts like Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage.

“No, I love metalcore. You can’t tar us with that brush solely. But I think if you had to put us under an umbrella or a genre or something, I think metalcore is something that, that’s what we would class ourselves as, especially back in the day,” Tuck said. “I don’t think it’s a dirty word at all.”

He continued: “It was so cool to be part of this new thing. Nu metal was kind of dying out. We were part of something like Avenged Sevenfold and Killswitch Engage and Parkway [Drive] and all these bands. It was just like a new movement of metal.”

He explained that while they were part of a new movement, their musical DNA was firmly rooted in classic thrash metal. “We grew up on bands like Megadeth and Testament, Metallica and Slayer, and all this stuff, and we wanted to kind of do our version of that,” he said. “And, obviously, Bullet is very different to all of those bands, but the DNA, we extracted that and we wanted to make it ours, which is what we did.”

That DNA of classic thrash and modern metalcore is now being pushed into new territory, as the band is currently working on a new album with producer Carl Bown. In a previous interview, guitarist Michael “Padge“ Paget described the direction of the new material as “super heavy,” noting that the band is experimenting with “crazy tuning on this one, something we haven’t done before,” including “drop G.”

He stressed that the band’s core philosophy is to never repeat themselves. “We’ve always said we never wanna make the same album twice,” Paget explained. “One, I think it’s cop-out because we’ve already done it. We’ll never do what The Poison did for a debut album. And we like to keep it fresh for ourselves and challenge ourselves, make it interesting for the fans… We’ve gotta keep up with the curve and do our thing, but our way.”