Searching for the sheer improbability after a decade and a mountain of side-lining, their disparate style would find its place. Flatterers look like friends, as wolves to dogs. No one was really buying it, least of all the band themselves. They seemed doomed to fall into a recess. They’d simply run out of something momentous to say.

“We wanted to make something more… significant,” recalls vocalist Oli Sykes. “Jordan was a big reason for the shift. We had a drive in us; we just wanted to take it a step further. I felt like I could project a lot more than I had before, it was just time for a change.”

“Before Sempiternal, it was a weird time for the band; we toured constantly for eight years straight. We were fucked; a lot of people had a lot of shit going on, personal problems,” says bassist Matt Kean. “We didn’t even know if we were going to be a band anymore. In stepped Jordan and everything changed. The whole way we wrote music changed.”

It’s hard to remember what it feels like to be small. Sempiternal was lightning in a bottle. No one expected it to be more potent than the There is a Hell record. Yet, BMTH curb-stomped the atmospheric procrastinations of the past. They allowed Jordan Fish’s integral guidance in dissolving the unnecessary flourishes, the token hurrahs. There are no restrictions now. Producer of the new record That’s The Spirit and keyboardist Jordan rejects the term ‘creative director’. “Oh, Oli is more of the creative director than me; I can’t take credit for that. I don’t know what you’d call me. I’d probably be like an assistant to the regional manager,” he laughs.

Matt doesn’t mince his words. Nor does he exercise Jordan’s humility or endearment when talking of his talent. “He’s just a fucking genius at the end of the day, isn’t he? And I’m not just kissing his ass. You should see the guy work; he’s a maniac. We didn’t want to be in a band with just a shit synth line over a guitar. We wanted it to be full and fat and we wanted a fucking wall of sound, we don’t just want thin little shit. Back in the day before Jordan, we didn’t have a clue,” he admits.

Matt saw desire and desperation at a graceful interplay during his tenure in the band. There was just an elusive piece mislaid. “What makes Jordan so good is because he knows how to make other people’s ideas come across. Music has got to do that, otherwise it’s just fucking worthless. It needs to spike an emotion in you or what even is the point? You can feel it in your throat and it doing something to you, it means it’s working.”

With that rose the phoenix. Despite its leak prior to scheduled release, the mirth over Sempiternal contorted the time BMTH spent trying to get it ‘right’. The record -and it’s considerably high-minded reviews- were flight to acclaim. It marked the death of the last decade.

“We were just elated. I mean, it leaked two months early and it was like, oh fuck.” Matt felt concerned whether it would affect record sales or interest at all. “We had come from a place where we didn’t know if we were going to be a band anymore. From that, we wrote the best record of our lives.” “Success was never a goal,” remembers Oli. “We’re always surprised when it happens.”

“The first few months were pretty weird after the release,” says Jordan. “It’s only been in the last six months where I got to the point where I feel like we were more… noticed. After last year’s Wembley [Arena] show, we had about three weeks off and we started writing right at the beginning of January.” It’s easy to get lost, even when you’ve made your way out of the desert. How do you slide into an industry that is ruthlessly critical and will destroy at the first sign of failure? From That’s The Spirit, Drown was an early experiment to gauge how a new BMTH record would be received.

“It was just an idea put forward by Oli and Jordan. At first, a few of us were like, ‘Oh, I don’t know whether we should be doing this,’” Matt concedes. “Once it evolved, it was like, ‘Hold on, this is actually really fucking good.’”

Jordan was curious seeing the result of a sharper delivery. “It was just for us to see if we could get away with doing a song that wasn’t super heavy. We also wanted to bridge the gap between the two albums.”

Operating in a sphere of critical popularity, how do you stop second guessing yourself? Do you still find yourself in moments of non-committal situations? Oli had tested the waters, but what would be the singular proof? “Drown played a good part in gauging that. I think we just did our best not to overthink what was expected of us. We did say originally that Drown wouldn’t be on the album.”

The funny charm of BMTH is that they’re still unaware of their impact. They reveal an allure that has been wiped clean of its dirt. Drown was always going to be a hit- the question was whether it would slide easily into tracks that were still six months from being written.

“It was a lot bigger than we ever thought it was going to be. It felt like a shame to let it be lost between two records.” Oli says that if they made ten good tracks, Drown would be the eleventh. “Sometimes, it would be utter garbage,” he laughs. Matt claims unmitigated confidence. “This band has never really second-guessed itself. This is our music, this is how we play, this is how we do it, and these people back it; that’s fucking brilliant. We’ve always been like, ‘This is what we’re doing, if you don’t like it, then fuck off.’”

Unusual soundscapes seem natural at first glance and that only makes Oli and Jordan obsessive which is what works most. They each lend a taste of a rusty nail before it’s hammered into a track. “Jordan and I are very similar people,” Oli smiles. “When we work, nothing else matters in life. My brain is creative and his is technical. I can come up with an idea but before Jordan, I couldn’t get them out. Like Jordan says: sometimes your ability can stunt your creativity.”

“I think so,” agrees Jordan.  “That’s always been a big part of the song writing. Not just the songs, it’s the overall production, the weird effects and noises. It’s all a part of the experience, isn’t it? The songs have improved and are more developed.”

Most particularly on Doomed, the intro song to the record: The air has been sucked out of your lungs, the space, the room. It’s charged up, relevant, and forces you to terms with the peculiar feeling that you may not have noticed till it was ripped from you. “Everything has its place and it’s got to be there for a reason,” adds Oli. “Everything needs to connect. It’s to demonstrate what I’m saying, to give you imagery. It may be a weird sound but it gives you a feeling of something particular.”

For the right sound, there are a number of factors, Jordan explains. “If the music can convey emotion without the lyrics, that usually makes a good song. With lyrics, then that’s when they work hand in hand, that’s when I find it’s most effective.”

What could be seen as risk only contradicts the limitation of just four instruments. On Fright, Sykes matches Chino Moreno on the ‘throat you’d like to fuck’ scope. Everything is way sexier when sex itself is circled hungrily like an exceptionally patient vulture.

“We have a saxophone solo on the record,” Jordan laughs. “I was like, we can’t actually do this. Surely we can’t have a saxophone solo. Oli was adamant; he was like, put it in there. I said, we can’t get away with that. He said, we’re never getting rid of the solo so don’t even bother arguing.” “You have to take risks if you want to be artistically satisfied,” laughs Oli. “The last track (Oh No) is about how it feels to still be 18. The song is meant to sound like you’re walking into a club and it’s final call. The saxophone came through and the night’s over. It’s got to make sense.”

“You know, there was a moment when we were writing that we thought we should do a heavier song,” he continues. “We spent a whole day on it. It’s weird when you’re writing; you’re in this bubble where you have to convince yourself that there’s potential in what you’re doing, even if you’re not upper sure. But we looked back and thought, this is just not us anymore. It just didn’t feel… good. We all knew straight away. I said, this is shit, isn’t it. And everyone else said ‘yep.’” “The screaming didn’t seem right to us anymore,” agrees Jordan.

As a writer, Oli is a thinker, a sensualist, an assailant. He has an intense, soul-searching honesty that transcends any pretense. A simple lyric will do here, just fine. “You read the words over and over again, and sometimes it can be like, ‘That’s the worst thing I’ve ever written’. One day it’s brilliant and the next I hate it I hate it I hate it. Jordan will always say, ‘What are you talking about?’ You have to come back to it until it feels both private and acceptable to be public.”

Oli actively feels no need to escape the system of his own self-control. It’s one of those things that’s hard to crack but once it’s done, everything’s richer. Nothing is there for the sake of it. Behind doe eyes lies the wolf Oli so often references, a bravado where ‘every scar will build my throne’. He’s proud of them. He’s valiant, and they don’t seem so severe anymore.

The Beatles shimmer of international fame can be bright on the eyes, even if the picture is slightly distorted. Oli knows better. “We’ve always had to turn people’s opinions around and we did. If you put a good CD out and it deserves the praise, don’t sit back and think, ‘We’re great and do whatever, I’m sure we’ll smash it out like the last one’. That’s the wrong way to think. You have to go in twice as hard. People always say we’re a massive band, but we still see ourselves as a bunch of lads from Sheffield. We’re not rock stars.”

“I don’t think a rock star exists anymore,” Matt continues, seriously bemused. “We don’t want to be rock stars. We don’t want to do VIP shit. We’re very reserved; we like to do our own thing. We love our band. Our band is our life, and when we’re not doing that, we want to walk our fucking dogs, you know what I mean? We’re not interested in being rock ‘n’ roll dickheads.”

Oli’s distance from the hysteria is natural. The bridge between anonymity and stage doesn’t quite connect. Maybe that’s not surprising. A distrust of fame is natural as it comes. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to anyone, but I think it’s important to have that mystery,” he says quietly. “We’re normal people. If people got to know me too well, I’d be a boring person just like everyone else. When you’re a kid, your dream is to meet and speak to your favourite bands but that illusion is what makes things so celebrated, and for what?”

Is mainstream a dirty word? Damned if you do, damned if you certainly don’t. It’s hard to negotiate hype and whether it’s justified. “It took us 12 years to get here. If it took us 12 months it would be a different story altogether,” says Matt. “And it’s taken us 10 years for ANY kind of big label to even take notice of us. We’ve come from the shit, we’ve seen the shit and we’ve persevered and got out of the shit.”

“I think we’re lucky in a sense because we never had that hype,” says Oli, and as the words come from his mouth, he blindly believes in them, in a most charming way. “Although, when our peers would make a great record, we would be like, ‘ohhh’. But looking back, I’m so thankful that it’s the opposite for us. We’ve been fighting to show people that we’re good. It would be selling out if we were still writing music we did three years ago. It doesn’t reflect us,” he admits. “The truly great bands that will last -bands like Arctic Monkeys- are not scared of the opinions of anyone.” Jordan laughs that Oli likes to make a joke out of it anyway.

“We sell this merch that’s black with heavy writing that says “Northern Pop Metal”. That’s basically what we are. We’re pop metal.” Oli has made no secret of their love for pop music and its influence on BMTH. “We’re not elitist,” laughs Oli. “I’d love to be that band that gets kids into heavier music, not just ‘heavy’ as a generalisation.”

That’s The Spirit was conceived without the usual role of a sullen heavy metal doomslayer, more versatile than could be expected from a band that gripped on tight while creating a complicated vision. It just took a little longer for the payoff in keeping things a little strange, brilliant, and creatively impulsive. Bring Me The Horizon don’t forget the rewards of making carefree music just for the sake of it, too. “I hope people don’t question now why this band is where it is. We work hard for it,” states Jordan. “Oli couldn’t sing three or four years ago, and he worked so hard. We’ve never fluked it. You put in the groundwork and know how to make a crowd react in the right way. Oli didn’t become the front man that he is without working at it.”

The flirts with darkness are still yet to be stomped out, but Oli is optimistic. He’s just playing on the lighter end of the spectrum. There’s something enigmatic about a man still figuring out how to weather his storms. “As long as you don’t let yourself get too jaded, and stay grounded, I think every band is capable of doing better and better each time.”

In anticipation of an impending September 11^th release of That’s The Spirit, Bring Me The Horizon scattered teasers like a trail of crumbs for hungry fans to decipher. The record title is that phatic term for “When you’re in those situations where you haven’t really got an answer or an alternative, while being in a bad place. It’s raining and there’s nothing else to do but get on with it,” explains Oli. “When it came to the promotion, we had these meetings with executives and marketing managers coming up with mad ideas. But we didn’t want that. The whole point of this album has to be ‘we don’t give a fuck’, I guess!” Oli laughs. “We don’t want to shove it down your throat. No gimmicks. I wanted the umbrella to be a symbol that got people talking without knowing what it means. We didn’t think it was going to go anywhere. It became clear that it was like this huge interaction in the hands of our fans, and finding the value of community, even if it’s online.”

And what of the mysterious codes? The indecipherable clues to lyrics and possible track titles on Oli’s Instagram account got fans interacting and using their heads instead of just scrolling through newsfeeds-what could they mean? Perhaps a coded editorial from that month’s Financial Review? Nuclear launch codes?

Oli explains. “I’m useless on the computer, you know what I mean? When it comes to the internet, I find it hard to talk to fans. It was cool for me to use it in a way that was a lot more analog, I guess. But we underestimated those kids. Within minutes, someone had cracked it. And then it was just a matter of seeing how crazy and how difficult it could get. It was mind-blowing. Obviously, the rest of the band knew the lyrics and they still couldn’t figure out the codes. It was so cool to see these kids pulling their hair out and even though it was through the internet, they sat at a desk with a pencil and figured it out, offline. It was a cool experiment; I could have done it forever. I was getting married at the time and my wife was like, ‘Okay you’ve got to stop doing this now,’ because I was turning into a madman. ‘Wait! How else can I fuck with these kids?’” He laughs.

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