Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has spoken about how his band have evolved, and won over the haters.
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Sykes admits that he felt that in order for BMTH to survive as a band, they would have to take risks and break through scene boundaries, and that in doing so, the Yorkshire quintet have turned around much of the criticism levelled at the group.
"I don’t quite know how we’ve turned things around," Sykes admits. "We were so derided 15 years ago, it felt like we were getting on everyone’s tits. I’ve got zero bitterness to anyone who used to hate our band though. If I weren’t in it, I’d have probably thought we were a bunch of wankers as well. We’ve worked hard to become a proper band though and I think people respect that. It feels like people are on our side now, rather than constantly trying to knock us down a peg."
Sykes also tells interviewer Ali Shutler that he believes that rock music in 2022 is in rude health.
"Rock music was never meant to be trendy, it’s supposed to be a counter-culture," he says, denying that the genre was ever "dead", contrary to the opinion of certain senior citizen rockers. “Now, it’s exactly where it’s meant to be, but the scene is healthier than it’s ever been. There’s so much more diversity in the people who are making it and what it’s talking about.”
The singer also hinted at some of the themes which will be explored on the next Bring Me The Horizon album, saying "This next record is about trying to use my recovery [from addiction] as a story about how we all recover, how we move forward in this society, and what the next steps are. The cracks are beginning to show in this capitalist, patriarchal world we’ve built. I know this is nihilist as hell, but with the ways things are going, it feels like the end of days.”
