A shot through the dark

After its lead singer nearly lost his voice, metal band Bullet for My Valentine fires back with a stunning new album

It sounds like a bad dream: A singer in a band goes into record the follow-up to a successful debut album and discovers that he is unable to sing.

But in the winter of 2006 it was the nightmare Matt Tuck, frontman for Welsh heavy-metal band Bullet for My Valentine, couldn't escape.

The quartet, which plays the Tsongas Arena in Lowell today, was working on the recently released "Scream Aim Fire" when Tuck began struggling with the first directive in the album title thanks to chronic throat infections. In addition to the band's Maiden-meets-Metallica guitar offensive, it was Tuck's otherworldly wail - which hopscotches from Freddie Mercury highs to Cookie Monster lows - that helped to sell a million copies of BFMV's 2006 debut, "The Poison."

Hot tea and vocal rest weren't going to cut it. A tonsillectomy was scheduled and, after nearly two months of recovery, still nothing. There were brief discussions by drummer Michael Thomas, guitarist Michael Paget, and bassist Jay James about disbanding or hiring another singer, a heartbreaking concept for four guys who had been friends longer than they had been a band.

"It was the worst thing in the world to go through. A singer that can't sing is useless," Tuck says from a tour stop in Rochester, N.Y.

"We were all pretty worried about it because we'd try some vocals for a week, and his voice was not as strong as it should be. And then we just stopped," says Colin Richardson, who produced "Scream Aim Fire."

Because it's what songwriters do, Tuck poured his rage into "Deliver Us From Evil" in which he laments "a passion ending so the world ceases turning." Fittingly, this anthem, which includes some of his most gravity-defying vocals, turned his devil's horns right side up.

"It was just a weird twist of fate," says Tuck. "It was that song that I concentrated on because of the range of it, and then one day I was singing it, and it came back."

Although his tonsils were inflamed, Tuck believes that ultimately the issue was "definitely psy chosomatic more than anything." That said, he refuses to question either the original loss or the mysterious return - or modify his approach to singing. Instead, he's thankful for what the trauma gave him as a person and a songwriter.

His little miracle didn't keep the mood from being generally grave throughout "Scream." It is rife with such metal mainstay themes as the horrors of war, family dysfunction, and the many forms bullies can take from high school to middle management.

"We took a lot of [expletive] in school and even in the workplace for who we were, what we looked like, what we did, and our ambitions," says Tuck of revenge fantasies like "Waking the Demon." But being a nice boy from Wales, Tuck says revenge is a dish best served from the stages of packed arenas: "It's nice that the people that gave us [expletive] know where we are and what we've done with our lives."

Even though anger is a common ingredient in metal, a sense of optimism also peeks through the cracks. "We're not a band that just likes to write about things that are depressing," says Tuck. "It's always looking on the brighter side of the negative."

That brightness shines through in slivers of stacked harmonies, snatches of sing-song melodies, and lyrical guitar solos that pop up between the double-time shred fests that dominate the rest of the record. All of which owe a purposeful debt to BFMV forebears like Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Queen, and Van Halen.

"I think if you take in references from another period, you might as well just take it from the classic bands," Richardson says with a laugh, adding that "the direction was to delve into what they grew up with. They're all timeless radio songs, so it's not a bad place to delve into, really."

It's also not a bad strategy, says WAAF music director and afternoon host Mistress Carrie. "They're very carefully bridging the generation gap and paying homage to the guys who did it first but changing it up for a new generation. It's very smart."

Tuck has certainly been a good student of metal. Of his upbringing in Wales, he says, "it wasn't so much that there was nothing to do; it was that I knew what I wanted to do, and it just helped that there was nothing else to do." So he went to every show he could to learn the tricks of his chosen trade.

"Even as a kid I would never be in the pit. I'd be in the seated area if possible just absorbing every little piece of every single band, picking up all these ideas for songs and what a live show should be about regardless of who it was."

His metal matriculation has served him well. In 2006, BFMV opened for Iron Maiden, and a few weeks back "Scream" debuted in the Top 10. All of which makes Tuck feel like a model of perseverance.

"Never give up on what you love," he says. "I didn't, and I'm still here today rocking out, you know?"