Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has admitted he spent years as a drug addict before fighting back ahead of sessions for the band's 2013 album Sempiternal.
And he says his bandmates, friends and family wanted to “kill” him before he spent a month in rehab.
The experience served as inspiration for BMTH’s fourth record, which won them Album of the Year gong at the Alternative Press Music Awards in Cleveland, Ohio on Monday.
Sykes said during his acceptance speech: “I want to say something that I never thought I’d talk about – before we wrote Sempiternal I was a fucking drug addict.
“I was addicted to a drug called ketamine. I was on it for years and I was fucked off my head. My band wanted to kill me, my parents wanted to kill me and my brother wanted to kill me. Everyone wanted to fucking take me to hell – but they didn’t. They stood by me. They supported me through all that shit and we wrote Sempiternal because of it.”
The vocalist chose to keep his stint in rehab a secret, and noted that fans kept writing to him as usual, not realising what he was going through. “You had no idea, but you were sending me letters, texts, emails,” he told supporters.
“And when I got out of rehab I didn’t want to fucking scream any more. I wanted to sing from the fucking rooftops. And it’s all thanks to you.”
Sempiternal’s 11 tracks were written in 2012, including Can You Feel My Heart, Sleepwalking, Go To Hell For Heaven’s Sake and Hospital For Souls. In an interview after its release Sykes mentioned that “a problem” had provided a theme that tied the songs together. Guitarist Jona Weinhofen left the band acrimoniously before recording sessions, to be replaced by keyboardist Jordan Fish.
