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Bring Me The Horizon: Sadness Might End
Alternative Press - Rob Ortenzi on 3/11/09 @ 12:31 PM - altpress.com
Story by: Andrew Kelham
Photos: James Sharrock
After playing the final date of Warped Tour this past August, British metalcore quintet Bring Me The Horizon felt like they had finally arrived. On that day, the band leveled a 6,000-strong crowd and afterward retreated to their bus where Epitaph Records mainstay Brett Gurewitz excitedly told the band their set was the best performance he had ever seen on Warped. "The tour was the best thing that ever happened to our band," proclaims guitarist Lee Malia. "Some tours you have a few good shows, but [Warped] was constant huge crowd after constant huge crowd and each day was insane. We are not used to that. In England, it's different."
Malia's words were clearly illustrated by the events that followed. The next day, the band flew from Los Angeles to the U.K. for a show in London. At that gig, they were maced and had to stop their set one song short. Two days later, frontman Oli Sykes spent a night in police custody, causing the band to miss a slot on the main stage at Leeds Festival.
As a general rule of thumb, life in Bring Me The Horizon is not simple, but it is interesting. Whether the band are touring the country in a post office van driven by a man who loves Britain so much he sleeps in a Union Jack flag and nothing else, starting riots in Australia, stopping fights at shows or avoiding criminal records, it seems that BMTH-Sykes, Malia, bassist Matt Kean, guitarist Curtis Ward and drummer Matt Nicholls-have already crammed more into their four years of existence than some bands would in an entire career.
Today AP has journeyed to Sheffield, South Yorkshire (think Texas, strong rural and farming communities and funny accents) to hear the band's story. The band have congregated inside Sykes' apartment, a relatively spacious duplex inside a converted water mill adjacent to the city's canal. (Sykes is the only member of the band who owns property; his earnings from the band are substantially boosted by his clothing company Drop Dead. The band are all gathered in the lounge watching The Jeremy Kyle Show, the English equivalent of Jerry Springer and laughing at a British magazine's podcast where two journalists insult the band repeatedly. It is a narcissist's paradise. All the jokes are self-depreciating, all the smiles are wide.
Over the next two hours, highlights of the band's history are shared: The quintet formed in 2004 and were spotted by Jamie Farrell, frontman for U.K. metalcore outfit, the Nothing, when they opened a local show that his band were headlining. Impressed by the band's performance, he started Thirty Days Of Night Records and gave the band £1,000 to record an EP. The result was This Is What The Edge Of Your Seat Was Made For, four tracks of chugging, squealing, deafening tech metal that's infectiously naïve, ambitious and appealing. Immediately after the EP's release, the band hit the road, hacking the email account of fellow metalcore act Johnny Truant and contacting show organizers to gain a slot at their gigs. After a string of successful shows, the band signed with Visible Noise and re-released their EP. Then the backlash started.
"We never played with anyone our age when we began," says Malia. "Suddenly, all these other young bands popped up and we got blamed for it because they were complete shit. Everyone focused their anger on us."
The 17-year-olds became whipping boys for a sprightly genre soon after named "deathcore," and it wasn't long until the British music press and those within the various strata of the metal scene began taking swipes at BMTH for their sound and look. "To be fair, looking back at photos of our band, I would have said we were pricks based on our appearance," Ward admits, laughing. "We looked ridiculous. I'm still offended by how we used to look."
Unperturbed by their lack of style, the band soldiered on with bassist Kean handling finances on the road, Sykes' mom Carol booking shows and drummer Nicholls handling only the keys to the practice space. ("We used to rent a room off some huge stoners," the drummer recalls. "We never used to pay [rent], as the owners were constantly stoned and half asleep. If they were awake, we would leave down the fire escape and they never remembered we hadn't paid, so we kept coming back.") The band wrote Count Your Blessings in those rehearsal rooms then decamped to Birmingham to record in superstar pop-reggae act UB40's studio with Dan Sprigg. The band spent 10 times as much on Blessings as they did on their debut EP, but were still disappointed with the results. ("The producer used to play our song back and then play a System Of A Down song to try and make our levels sound the same," remarks Malia. "Oh, and he was mixing through a broken speaker.") Despite the input of a clueless producer, Blessings was a cogent affair of caustic metallic hardcore laced with moments both surprisingly melodic and disturbingly extreme. Powerful sub-bass frequencies were added and the songs tightened up significantly. Verses and choruses became vaguely discernable and riffs began to display smarts and savvy.
The debut was released toward the end of 2006, but discussions of the album's merits soon stopped when Sykes was arrested in early 2007 for allegedly urinating on a female fan in the band's bus after a show. (The charges were eventually dropped due to a lack of evidence.) BMTH spent the rest of the year growing their fanbase online (and on tour), and in early 2008, went to Arboga, Sweden, to record their second album, Suicide Season, with accomplished metal producer Fredrik Nordström (At The Gates, In Flames, Arch Enemy). Issued in America on Epitaph, the disc fulfills every sonic promise the band tried to make on Blessings with maximum firepower. BMTH have stepped up their game on Suicide Season, and Sykes is ready to embrace America-for the glory, and more importantly, his own sanity.
As the rest of the band enjoy themselves, Sykes chooses to talk in his bedroom. Around his bandmates, the singer is all jokes and laughter, but as he sits on his bed upstairs, he seems more fragile, the polar opposite of the pissed (and pissing) misogynist he's purported to be. He retreats further from the cliché as conversation leans toward his band's constant tumult and his recent arrest after a night out in London.
"A girl and a guy who work at a magazine were victimizing the band all night," he says, forming every word carefully. "He pulled out his card and said, 'Read this, we own you,' and [the woman] just insulted us verbally all night. As we went to leave the club, she lunged at me and strangled me, I pushed her off and went outside. Soon after, the police came and I got [arrested] as it had been reported that I had hit her. The day after, she retracted her statement, as they were going to get CCTV evidence and she knew I had done nothing wrong. If I had done something wrong, that magazine would blow it up; but one of their staff did something, so it stays quiet." Once again, all charges were dropped.
Another crucial moment happened when Sykes spent a night in jail in Nottingham, forcing his band to cancel their slot opening the mainstage at the Leeds Festival. The night the singer was arrested in Nottingham, he was drunk; likewise, he'd been drinking the night he was arrested in London. Does he see a recurring theme? "I am different when drunk," he admits before spotting where the question is leading. "I can be an idiot, but so can everyone. When I am not drunk, I am a lot more shy and quiet. When I drink, I find it easier to talk to people; when I'm not, I find it harder. I do worry [about] what people think about me."
Sykes is naturally quiet around new people, something deeply at odds with the unbridled frontman he appears as onstage. He admits he finds it difficult to reconcile the two extremes and trust people. He says he has to try twice as hard to be friendly with everyone he meets in an attempt to debunk the many myths and rumors that are now attached to him and his band. It's a situation that clearly wears him down. What we know of Sykes' life is exhausting; what we don't know could fill a book-or an EP and two full-length albums.
It's through his lyrics that Sykes vents about problems with friends, foes, his past relationship with model SJ Whiteley and much more. On Suicide Season, he's written his most direct lyrics yet; a read-through suggests that in between tours, arrests and court appearances, he has dealt with a few skeletons in his closet ("Chelsea Smile"), betrayal ("Sleep With One Eye Open") and the untimely passing of a close friend (the title track). There are more personal commentaries found within Season's acerbic yet mournful prose, but Sykes isn't ready to talk about them yet.
"I talk about stuff on the new record that no one knows about," he says somewhat cagily. "One event I sing about, if it had happened then the band would be over. No one apart from close friends and the band really know about it. It [wasn't] even a matter of quitting, the band would not have been able to continue if it had happened. Despite what everyone probably thinks, it has nothing to do with me and my court case.
"We have got our fans, and things seem like they are going great in America," he continues wearily, but without provocation. "It would be good to get a bit of respect from our peers. Everyone here is embarrassed of our band; I wish people were proud and would accept us as a part of British heavy metal."
At that moment, he decides it's time for the band to head to their practice space, a former industrial unit on the outskirts of the city. Outside, Ward offers AP a lift to the train station as the rest of the group head off to pick up their gear from Sykes' parents' home and transfer it to their new practice space. As Duran Duran blasts from the hammered speakers of his Peugeot 206, he sums up the feeling in the band succinctly. "We saw the crowds on Warped Tour in America. We all thought if we got this far on a bad album, imagine what will happen when we release a good one."
With that comment, he smiles and goes to practice the songs on Suicide Season. Not just a good record, but a great one. Armed with the support of Epitaph and a choice slot on next year's Taste Of Chaos Tour, the question is what will happen to Bring Me The Horizon as they set their sights on America. Based on their past experiences, the safest answer is, "Who knows?"
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very interesting article.
Check out The Color of Violence and their song "Christina, Christina" - http://www.myspace.com/thecolorofviolence
They were pretty badass at Warped last year.