Bring Me The Horizon

Yet with their upcoming fifth album That’s The Spirit, Bring Me The Horizon have taken an extraordinary leap into unfamiliar territory. With ample playing time on triple j already for the single ‘Happy Song’, it’s evident the band is set to achieve a higher reach than ever before.

“I guess our fans are used to being surprised by what we do now,” says vocalist Oli Sykes. “That’s The Spirit is not really an exception; it doesn’t really sound anything like Sempiternal. We have felt like we have progressed as songwriters as we wrote Sempiternal,and I think we got there writing something we felt more comfortable with. It has just been a constant learning curve. None of us were musicians when we started this band, so we learnt how to write and we got better at it progressively. We are always learning, and we always will.

“I think a big thing for us is we took our time and we never did anything we didn’t want to do. We really wanted to make a record that wasn’t just for people in our scene. It doesn’t matter what music you listen to, we just wanted to make a rock album that could really break into the mainstream and appeal to anyone. That’s The Spirit doesn’t have your breakdowns and your metal riffs like Sempiternal had, and I think that is just because we have really pushed metal to its capacity.”

Bring Me The Horizon have taken a big leap of faith on That’s The Spirit. Sonically, it still has riffs that will open circle pits, but the noticeable absence of Sykes’ screaming vocals could leave fans divided.

“We do want to appeal to the mainstream, but everything we have done on the record was done for a reason, and it is not being done for any other reason than it works for the songs,” he says. “It’s weird; when we started writing we were like, ‘There is hardly any screaming on this record,’ but every time we tried to put it in, it felt forced. It felt like we were doing it for the sake of it.

“We had this experiment one day where we just wrote this all-out heavy song, something that would have fit in on Sempiternal, but for this record, it didn’t feel like us. It wasn’t working. We aren’t trying to send this message this time. We haven’t got this straight up anger. There is so much more emotion that had to be illustrated, and just screaming one note wasn’t going to cut it, and it felt weird.”

The change in flavour risks coming across to fans as ‘selling out’, but Sykes is adamant that throughout the whole writing process, Bring Me The Horizon have stayed true to their identity.

“We are obviously really proud of the music. We knew that we were doing it all for the right reasons. We weren’t doing it just to become a bigger band; we were doing it because we can really write better music this way. We can really do something special and unique, and it wasn’t just for the sake of it. At the same time, we have got those old songs, and we knew that, but we wanted to try and challenge ourselves to write music that hits people heavily in different ways.”

Whether you listen to metal or not, you can’t avoid the presence of Bring Me The Horizon on the front covers of music magazines everywhere. For Sykes, however, the spotlight was initially too much to handle, leading the idolised vocalist into his darkest moments. It was only a year ago that Sykes shocked the music world when he stepped up to receive the award for Best Album at the inaugural AP Music Awards, and for the first time, admitted his addiction to the drug ketamine – one which he had been battling for a number of years. It was this turning point in Sykes’ life that inspired That’s The Spirit.

“It was very important to me to figure out how to deal with sadness, my emotions, and my insecurities to overcome drugs,” he says. “You basically aren’t given a choice in rehab to overcome addiction. You pretty much get better on their terms with the 12-step program where you hand yourself over to God, and you apologise for this and that, and accept that you’re a drug addict, and that the rest of your life will be a struggle because of drugs.

“For me, I thought, ‘Fuck that, this is not what it is about.’ I didn’t always want drugs. At one time drugs scared the shit out of me – I didn’t want to touch them. I wanted to get back to that place. To get back to that point was very important, because I figured out why I was taking these drugs. It was all to do with this band and the way I had been built up in the media.

“Some people fucking hated me and some people worshipped me like a god. I thought that I could never live up to the unrealistic image that magazines and the media create of me. I used to beat myself up so much because of that. Everyday. I just wasn’t how people thought I was in both respects. That’s what made me want to take drugs in the end. Instead of not fucking dealing with it, I’m just not going to feel it whatsoever; I’m just going to numb myself. So that’s what the whole album is about. It’s more about things I have realised or noticed that make me a happy person.”

There’s no doubt now that after battling the darkness that almost separated the band, Sykes and Bring Me The Horizon have come out stronger than ever. To cap off a stellar 2014, they headlined their first-ever arena show in front of a massive crowd at London’s Wembley Arena – a feat that blew Sykes away.

“We never thought that we could sell out Wembley in a million years. I’m not someone who believes in our hype, and last year we were proposed the idea of Wembley and I thought they were stupid. I’m really surprised by how much we have progressed and what we have achieved. I think Wembley really set this mindset that I’m actually going to listen to what people say about this band now, and accept it when they say that we could play arenas or headline festivals. It doesn’t sound as ridiculous now, and I think we have just surprised ourselves so much from playing that show.

“I think that now we are ready to give it a shot at going into the big league, and even attempting at becoming one of the biggest bands in the world.”