Music

Listeners may have found the release of Amo at the beginning of 2019 to be a challenging outlet of BMTH’s evolving creative expression, but the band really went wild with this EP at the end of the year. It’s the most potentially isolating piece of work from their resume, consisting of eight electronic pop songs with lo-fi, hip-hop sounding beats and minimal vocals. Music to listen to… — whose official title is too long to mention in full here — also includes a few collaborations with outside artists, the biggest-name of which is with Halsey, featured on the electronic-based “¿” Even if this EP isn’t your BMTH go-to, you have to appreciate Sykes’ determination to keep trying new things and take risks to move alternative music forward.

Bring Me the Horizon’s debut album, Count Your Blessings is the epitome of adolescent angst — and that’s why we love it. “When I was 17, death metal and extreme hardcore was the best music in the world to me,” Sykes explained about making his older music. Blessings includes deep death growl vocals, and guitar riffs inspired by Carcass. BMTH were both literally and figuratively screaming for attention with this album, also turning heads with provocative song titles like “Braille (For Stevie Wonder’s Eyes Only)” and “Tell Slater Not To Wash His D**k.” It worked out — the album is what birthed their passionate deathcore fanbase.

Before the lockdown in 2020, Sykes wrote “Parasite Eve” – which to him, was about a Japanese virus he heard about and the anxiety he had about the unknown. Then COVID-19 struck, and the single off of Post Human: Survival Horror was shelved for a while because it “felt too close to the bone,” Sykes said. After thinking about it, the band decided to release the single a few weeks later: “In our music we’ve always wanted to escape, but there’s been too much escapism and ignoring the problems in the world.” 

Post Human: Survival Horroris about the feeling of isolation and craving human connection. It was also the next EP following Amo, and made for a total contrast with that set. The 2020 record was also the resurrection of metalcore for Bring Me the Horizon, as the set include some of their heaviest songs since Sempiternal — particularly “Kingslayer,” which would sound like a song straight off Count Your Blessings, if not for the feature appearance by Japanese kawaii metal outfit BABYMETAL.

Bring Me the Horizon’s sophomore album marked the first stylistic shift in their sound, as they began to merge deathcore and metalcore. Suicide Season incorporated the group’s first electronic beats with “Chelsea Smile,” but they still went full-force metal with sonic blasts “Football Season is Over,” “It Was Written In Blood” and the eight-minute closing title track. The album was perfectly balanced, as it included all these elements, as well as clean vocals from Sam Carter (singer of progressive metal band Architects) on “The Sadness Will Never End.”  

The kid on the gram was right, this s–t ain’t heavy metal — except it’s more than all right. If this album is pop, then it’s pop perfection. Themes of love, relationships, lack of purpose and depression are on display on Amo, which might be Sykes’ most personal record yet: written following his divorce, it served as a creative outlet for him to let out his emotions, and connect with fans. The song “I Don’t Know What to Say” is a tribute to Sykes’ childhood friend who was dying of cancer, and him not knowing how to comfort someone when their tragic fate has already been sealed, with lyrics like, “Where do you start when you know it has to end?” 

Even though it was a huge departure from the band’s previous work, you can’t help but appreciate while listening how raw and real Sykes’ lyrics are on Amo, and how adventurous the band is venturing into new sounds.  

Bring Me the Horizon’s third album was the last record in their metalcore era, and a great transition between their old and new style. There Is a Hell showed they had already perfected the use of electronics — EDM superstar Skrillex even lends some additional programming to the album — when at the time, that was something a lot of their peers were still unable to pull off.  

The band’s growing maturity is also evident in songs like “It Never Ends,” which reflects the feeling of being trapped in a never-ending situation. Meanwhile, producers Henrik Udd and Dream Evil guitarist Fredrik Nordström added depth to the band’s sonics, as when Sykes’ clean vocals shine over the orchestral outro to “Fuck” — though the band was also still more than capable of creating the uncompromising chaos of “Alligator Blood.”

This was the album that shot Bring Me the Horizon into rock’s mainstream, bringing them to the same playing field as Panic! At The Disco and Pierce the Veil, some of the most successful emo bands at the time. The set also includes some of their best work to date: Songs like “Drown” and “Avalanche” break down mental health struggles (“What doesn’t kill you, makes you wish you were dead/ Got a hole in my soul growing deeper and deeper”), but the music itself is not quite so heavy — taking a different path with a now more-alternative-leaning sound and almost all clean vocals. 

“Every song on the album explores the happiness we can find in the sadness; it’s all about turning dark into light,” said Sykes in a 2015 Billboard interview. The band’s newfound sound streamlined their appeal — making them more accessible to non-metalheads — and resulted in Spirit becoming their top 10 breakthrough on the Billboard 200 albums chart, reaching No. 2 in Oct. 2015.

This is Bring Me the Horizon at their very best. The 2013 release was the album that changed everything for BMTH, and it marked a lot of firsts for the band — one being the introduction to Fish, who’s been credited as the mastermind behind so many changes the band has gone through over the years. Sempiternal also marked the first major sonic shift for the band, as it steered away from their deathcore sound and moved them into post-hardcore territory.

Not only was this album held dear by any emo kid in the early 2010s, it also was a pivotal one for Sykes — as he wrote it after his stay in rehab, seeking treatment for his ketamine addiction. It showcases the frontman completely vulnerable in numbers like “Sleepwalking” (“My skin’s smothering me/ Help me find a way to breathe”) and “Can You Feel My Heart,” which enjoyed a recent resurgence on TikTok. Yet even now, listening to the breakdowns and shredding in “Shadow Moses” leaves you wanting to risk your life in the mosh pit.