Bring Me The Horizon weren’t always the arena-straddling, genre-splicing provocateurs they are now. Back around the time of 2006’s debut album Count Your Blessings, they were a bunch of fast-rising deathcore upstarts whose reputation for cockiness - accurate or not – preceded them. Metal Hammer sat down with Oli Sykes and co at the time to find out the truth.
Take a long hard look at Bring Me The Horizon. Stare deep into the heavy-lashed eyes of their tattooed frontman Oli Sykes. Search for meaning behind the fringe of their guitarist Curtis Ward. After 30 seconds spent gawping at their heavily coiffured bonces, it’s possible that you already hate them. Or you may have simply written them off as young, image obsessed, pretty-boy weeds with no place in your heavy metal life. Give them chance to explain. For, as Oli himself admits: “If I wasn’t in this band and I just saw us I’d probably be slagging us off too…”
Sure, they’re young (two are just 19). They like their hair spray. And no, they haven’t ever had proper jobs (bar drummer Matt Nicholls, who was a part-time hairdresser). But before you dismiss them you might want to peruse Bring Me The Horizon’s mini-album This Is What The Edge Of Your Seat Was Made For and their new full-length Count Your Blessings. They’re chock full of brutal, thrashing, mind-melting metal. Put simply, they’re too heavy to ignore.
“People can’t believe how amazingly brutal we are from looking at us,” says Oli with the kind of grin that tells you he’s very, very proud of himself. “They think we’re going to be shit ‘cos of how we look, then they watch us play and love it.”
“Yeah. but we get that all the time,” smiles Curtis shrugging from across the room. “We’ve had it since day one.”
They had humble beginnings. South Yorkshire lads Oli, Curtis and Matt (joined by guitarist Lee Malia and bassist Matt Kean) formed their ear-bleeding noise outfit in early 2004. Signing to small indie-label Thirty Days Of Nights later that same year, the band released the mini-album the following Valentine’s Day.
In 2005, BMTH hooked up with Visible Noise, home of metal new-kids-on-the-block Bullet For My Valentine. Having no real commitments back home (the band were only 16 at the time of writing the four track mini-album), they immediately set out on the road playing every dingy venue that would take them. “We just play wherever and for whoever,” grins Matt Nicholls. “There was a time we had to get our parents to drive us to shows!”
They’ve since gigged with the likes of Zao and Johnny Truant, toured all across the country with Bleeding Through, and have packed out a massive 6,000 capacity tent at Download 2006. Tonight, just over two years since their ball started rolling toward stardom, Bring Me The Horizon are backstage at the London Underworld, ready to be the one and only support act for Massachusetts metal titans Killswitch Engage’s rare and intimate UK shows. Whether you like them or not, that they’ve come a long way is impossible to deny.
However, two days ago, BMTH played a show supporting Killswitch in Wolverhampton, and – as they tell it – the response from the crowd was hostile to say the least. Presumably, fans were there to see their headlining US heroes, not some cocky bunch of UK fashion kids.
“There were only a few people there that we knew liked us,” explains Oli, “but after we’d played, fans were coming up to us saying how much they enjoyed it. It’s like they were surprised…
“I think that people expected us to be emo or something, for our songs to be soft,” adds Curtis. “When they then hear that we have no singing at all, and that we are so brutal all the way through, they can’t believe their eyes or ears.”
Sitting backstage being interviewed, the five members of Bring Me The Horizon seem slightly lost. Listening to their wide-eyed replies, it’s hard to visualise the ear-busting metal that they so energetically bash out as often as four nights a week. Dressed in tight black t-shirts and torn jeans, the still of the room is only broken by the odd hand sweeping at a fringe to keep hair out of an eye, or an awkward shuffle on a chair.
It’s obvious that they believe strongly in what they do, but there’s no real evidence of the ‘cocky swagger’ that the members are said to carry – and that’ just one of a list of insults that the band get bombarded with daily over Myspace. For, as much love as there is for this bunch of young screamers, there is an equal amount of backlash. The group’s Myspace profile (currently racking up 51,000 friends and well over a million plays) receives messages of praise just as often as torrents of nasty emails, hateful messages and renaming them to Bring Me The Haircut. Why do you think people get so pissed off with you?
“I guess it’s our hair and our tight trousers,” shrugs Oli. “People mainly attack us about our image. But it’s also because we’re a bunch of kids. Before we were in this band, we already dressed like this, cos we were just every day kids, and we still are really. We’re not going to change just so that everyone else is happy. People always attack us saying that we care about image and stuff, but we don’t really care about image. It’s those others that care about image because they’re letting it get in the way of the music.”
Uh, yeah. Maybe they’re just jealous.
“I guess. Because we are so young and we’re doing really well,” agrees Oli. “I mean, it is quite crazy how young we are, and how well we’re doing.”
The man has a point. Not only does their young age have older, less-established bands quaking in their boots, but who would ever have thought that a music style so vicious and unpleasant to virgin ears could have ended up being so popular?
“I never thought a label like Visible Noise would sign a band like us,” admits Oli, sounding genuinely humble about his accomplishments “It’s just so weird. But I think that they made the right decision. We are doing well, and we do work hard.”
Throwing every ounce of effort and every morsel of time into Bring Me The Horizon, the band have swifty (and gladly) left behind the council estates of home. They’ve given up their education (though Lee studies guitar at college when he’s not on tour), and have thrown themselves headfirst into the rock’n’roll dream of touring and boozing. Oli has even covered around a quarter of his body in highly visible tattoos – pretty much severing any chance he could ever have of returning to a ‘normal’ life if the dream goes sour. Have you considered what you’ll fall back on if the band goes tits up?
The lads fall silent, almost as if the thought has never crossed their minds before today.
“I guess I’ll be in the call centre,” smiles Curtis – weirdly chirpy about the proposition. “I mean, there are people that we know that worked really hard at school, and now they are in the call centre. We could get a job doing that next week.”
“It’s obvious that one day this’ll all die out, just like every sort of music does,” shrugs Oli, sounding nearly nonchalant enough to make you think he doesn’t really give a fuck either way. “There is no point in worrying about it now. In the meantime, in the immortal words of Andrew WK, we’ll just party hard.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 160, November 2006
