They’ve just teamed up with fellow Yorkshire star YUNGBLUD, but Bring Me The Horizon have a much longer history of exciting collaborations than that…
Collaborations are nothing new for Bring Me The Horizon, but lately, the band have been embracing them more and more.
From their newest effort with young alternative star YUNGBLUD to the wide-ranging names that adorn last year’s Music To Listen To… EP and full-length album amo, you can now almost always count on Oli Sykes and co. to call up a famous pal and invite them into the studio.
But which crossovers have worked best? Here, we take a long at Horizon’s 8 greatest collaborations from throughout their career…
Alright, let’s start with the newbie, shall we? Whether you think YUNGBLUD totally belongs in the rock scene or not, there’s no doubt he’s got the pipes for this alt.metal rager. Ranting against the state of the world in 2020, Obey is both an important and empowering song for these crazy times – not to mention providing prime mosh-pit fuel for when the time comes and live music eventually returns. Oh yeah, can we get a promise that you’re going to perform this onstage together ASAP, guys?
Nu-metal riffs that were originally written for Limp Bizkit? A guest spot from extreme metal icon Dani Filth? And a colossal pop chorus that could easily fill the arenas that Horizon have been accustomed to playing these past few years? Check, check and check. While Oli warned ahead of amo’s release that the album would “definitely take a few listens… because the songs have got so much going on,” wonderful life already feels like a Bring Me staple. Plus, it brought us an official video in which a corpsepainted Dani eats cereal and goes grocery shopping, so what’s not to love?
When Josh Franceschi and Oli Sykes team up, the results are simply superb. The Horizon frontman’s guest appearance on You Me At Six’s Bite My Tongue turned the 2011 single into a scene favourite, but the year prior, Josh had already provided one hell of a crossover on Fuck (taken from 2010’s There Is A Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is A Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret). ‘We were young and in love / Heart attacks waiting to happen…’ Josh croons emotionally before an epic crescendo of synths and screams. Tbh, the title should probably be changed to Fuck Yes.
Despite initially wanting to get party king Andrew W.K. on this wild metalcore smash, Horizon ultimately recruited Deez Nuts man JJ Peters to help hammer home Football Season Is Over’s all-important message: ‘Party till you pass out, drink till you’re dead / Dance all night till you can’t feel your legs.’ “The lyrics are just about partying and being lads, it’s not too much of a serious song,” Oli told Kerrang!. “And it was written and recorded when I was drunk, which you can probably tell.” Yeah, we had an inkling…
If we were cheating here, we’d put Halsey’s Birds Of Prey soundtrack-starring song Experiment On Me on this list, given that it was co-written by Oli and keyboardist/samples chap Jordan Fish. Seeing as we’re specifically talking about Horizon songs, though, we’ll opt for ¿ instead. Taken from the band’s experimental Music To Listen To… surprise EP at the end of 2019, it’s a much moodier listen than Experiment On Me, even sampling Sempiternal opener Can You Feel My Heart? and interpolating amo track in the dark. The results, though, are wicked. “I’ve loved Bring Me my whole life,” Halsey tweeted, “and I’ve been a fan since I was, like, 14 years old, so getting to work with them was super-surreal.”
Horizon have two collaborations with Canadian electropop musician Lights on 2010’s There Is A Hell…, but opener Crucify Me pips it to the post because it is just a genuinely killer way to kick off a record. Though Lights’ vocals aren’t as prominent as they are on her other collab with the band (Don’t Go), the passages of, ‘There is a hell, believe me I’ve seen it / There is a heaven, let’s keep it a secret,’ are beautifully haunting. And as she closes the song singing, ‘I am the ocean, I am the sea / There is a world inside of me…’ it sets the tone perfectly for what is to follow…
‘’Cause a kid on the ’gram in a Black Dahlia tank says it ain’t heavy metal…’ has got to be one of the best lyrics of recent times, right? Featuring The Roots beatboxer Rahzel, Bring Me’s response to the internet trolls who have displayed negative opinions on their career evolution is an undeniable highlight of last year’s amo, with Oli unleashing his finest roar for good measure to prove that, yes, Horizon can still do metal if they want to. “There’s a little five-second clip at the end of the track that’s the heaviest we’ve sounded in years,” Jordan told us in a track-by-track breakdown (no, not that kind…) of the album.
Boy oh boy was it a treat watching Sam Carter stroll out onstage and join Bring Me The Horizon for The Sadness Will Never End at All Points East last year. It’s a metalcore classic that still holds up to this day, with both BMTH and the Architects frontman firing on all cylinders. And if you’d have told us back in 2008 that they would end up becoming two of Britain’s biggest rock bands… well, we probably would have believed you, to be fair.
