Named after a lyric in the album's opening song "Pray for Plagues", Count Your Blessings is representative of the band's early deathcore sound, which was phased out on later releases and eventually abandoned in favour of other, less aggressive styles.
Following the release of their first extended play This Is What the Edge of Your Seat Was Made For in October 2004, Bring Me the Horizon toured extensively while writing new material for their full-length debut album.
[3] Recording took place at DEP International Studios in Birmingham with producer Dan Sprigg, who had previously worked with bands including Cradle of Filth, Napalm Death and, more recently, Lostprophets.
Frontman Oliver Sykes described the recording process as "an intense experience" due to the group's desire to make the best debut album they could, with biographer Ben Welch claiming that they "were starting to feel the pressure of all of the hype that was building around them" at the time.
[4] When recording Count Your Blessings, Bring Me the Horizon intended to make an album which sounded "as heavy and brutal as they possibly could"; Welch claims that the band scrapped any song ideas that "didn't fit that criterion".
[13] According to Drowned in Sound columnist Raziq Rauf, the songs on the album "generally consist of The Black Dahlia Murder-style thunderous riffs mixed with some dastardly sludgy doom moments and more breakdowns than your dad's old Nissan Sunny".
[14] The lyrical content is admittedly simple, which according to Sykes is due to the fact that his life had "never been that bad" at the time he wrote them; the singer has noted that most songs on the album are "about girls or just growing up", which he claims contributes to the group's brand of "party music".
writer Bill Whish wrote positively about the release, praising the "vitriolic lyrics and brutally heavy guitar work" and welcoming the band as "a little more interesting" than some other metalcore artists.
[10] DIY magazine's Tom Connick dubbed "(I Used to Make Out With) Medusa" the "crowning jewel" of Count Your Blessings in a 2014 feature, claiming that it "Perfectly [captures] that youthful, drunken recklessness that defined [the band's] most controversial years" with its "razor sharp" guitar work and "thunderous breakdowns".
[29] Chad Bowar for About.com highlighted the band within their scene, praising their "catchy melodies" and "decent riffs and solos", and on Count Your Blessings welcomed the variety in styles of vocal delivery across the collection.
[9] Axl Rosenberg of MetalSucks complained that the band displayed "nothing to distinguish them from the pack" on the album, although he did praise the presence of "some decent breakdowns" and claim that the songs would make "good background noise".
[35] Following the release of "Drown" in 2014, described by Digital Spy's Adam Silverstein as "a universe away from the ... full-on commotion" of Count Your Blessings, Sykes reflected that the single would have "offended" the band members when they were younger, adding that the group were "never gonna sound like that again".
[36] Alternative Press writer Tyler Sharp has added that "The members of Bring Me the Horizon have evolved from teenage metalheads to a group of mature, progressed songwriters" in response to criticism of their change in style.