“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 progressed as songwriters as we wrote Sempiternal, and to me 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.”
Despite Sykes’ confidence, there’s no denying Bring Me The Horizon have taken a big leap of faith with That’s The Spirit. Musically, it still has riffs strong enough to inspire circle pits, however the noticeable absence of screamed vocals could leave fans divided.
“We do want to appeal to the mainstream,” says Sykes. “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. 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.”
Given the centrality of screaming to the band’s previous records, fans could interpret their exclusion from That’s The Spirit as ‘selling out’. However, Sykes is adamant that throughout the whole songwriting process, Bring Me The Horizon didn’t deviate from their core values.
“We are obviously really proud of the music,” he says. “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 Bring Me The Horizon frontman posing on the front cover of every music magazine around. However, the spotlight became too much for Sykes to handle, leading him into his darkest moments. One year ago Sykes shocked the music world when he stepped up to receive the award for Best Album at the inaugural AP Music Awards and admitted to his addiction to the drug ketamine – an addiction he’s been battling for a number of years. It’s 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.”
Sykes admits it was a very emotional journey to get to this point, and there was a lot to learn about his own image during the recovering phase. However, this transition has made him stronger than ever.
“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 though 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 makes me a happy person.”
Although fans were unaware of it at the time, Sykes’ drug addiction was so serious it almost split the band apart. Fortunately, it didn’t reach that point, and the band have been thriving ever since, especially with Sempiternal topping the Australian charts. Sykes has now reached the point where he can see the light in his dark past.
“I went through the darkest point of my life, and so did the band. We have come out on the other end of it better than ever, and that’s what it is all about. That would have never happened if it weren’t for me to open up and accept my demons, and not let it go to the worst point it could go. That’s what the album is about. It’s about making light out of darkness. You can’t have one without the other. I could have gone through life coasting, it could have never gotten too bad, but it would have never become this good. That’s what every song on this album is about.”
Having battled through the darkness that almost separated the band, Bring Me The Horizon have come out stronger than ever. In December 2014, the band headlined their first ever arena show in front of an enormous crowd at London’s Wembley arena; a feat that Sykes himself was blown away by.
“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 at attempting to become one of the biggest bands in the world.”
BY MICHAEL EDNEY
