Matt Tuck

Matt Tuck — Welsh vocalist and guitarist — is the founder and the voice of Bullet for My Valentine, the band that took British metalcore into the big arena circuit. The group was born in Bridgend, Wales, in 2003, and its formula was clear from the start: thrash metal riffs of classic descent — Metallica, Machine Head — combined with wide melodic choruses and vocals alternating clean singing and screaming. The Poison (2005) delivered that combination at a moment when American metalcore was dominant, and the record sold worldwide, something rare for a British metal band of that generation. Tuck writes and sings virtually the whole repertoire, which is physically demanding: alternating guttural screams and clean melody within the same song, night after night, costs the vocal cords dearly — he had surgery for exactly that early in his career and changed his technique afterwards. He is on all seven of the band's records, from The Poison to Bullet for My Valentine (2021), across the more melodic phases (Fever, 2010), the harder ones (Venom, 2015) and the rhythm section's line-up changes. Over twenty years he is the axis around which the whole band organises itself.