BRING ME THE HORIZON: THE FUTURE IS NOW

From scrappy metalcore to arena-ready anthems, Bring Me The Horizon have had quite the career. Now, it’s time to step even further away from their former selves.

“To a lot of people, we were a new band,” Bring Me The Horizon’s frontman begins. Back in 2013, the Sheffield-bred five-piece were at something of a crossroads. Having lost their former guitarist Jona Weinhofen, keyboardist Jordan Fish soon entered the picture for sessions on their fourth album ‘Sempiternal’. It was with that album that the band began to paint themselves in a new light. “It was as though our old albums didn’t even exist,” Oli Sykes continues, “but we were almost cool with that. It felt like the start of something new.”
For the British metal band, it really was something new. By the time that their fourth effort landed on shelves, their image had shifted. No longer were they considered the underdogs of the screamo scene; they were changing perceptions. Jordan encouraged Oli to move away from his previous intense bouts of screaming and veer further towards singing. Electronics began to play a bigger role. They became one of the heaviest bands featured on the radio and the mainstream was finally beginning to accept them.
“I guess with ‘Sempiternal’ we really stepped it up a notch in general,” Oli reflects. “It had been overwhelmingly positive; there are usually lots of ups and downs. It kinda pushed us out of our scene a bit more and into something new. I think we got a bit of a taste for it, to be honest. With Jordan coming into the band as well, we were able to develop so much during the time we were touring ‘Sempiternal’. It just naturally progressed, and we had just gotten better and better so by the time that the label were asking for a fifth single, we felt like we could do something so much better than what’s on ‘Sempiternal’.“
Ahead of their sold out show at Wembley Arena last December they released a standalone single, which would prove a more dramatic change than perhaps anticipated. “‘Drown’ was really received well, and then there was Wembley and stuff, so that left us with this taste to do something more. It was the first time everyone was paying attention to us; we’re not having to fight to get on the radio, we’re not having to fight to convince people that we can do something good. It’s like everyone was waiting to hear what we do next and everyone was ready for it, so it felt like too good an opportunity to pass up and wait. We decided at the start of this year we were just gonna work non-stop; get in and get it out and work harder than we’ve ever done before.”

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