In Praise Of Bring Me The Horizon

In honour of Oli Sykes returning to the cover of Kerrang! this week, Senior Editor Nick Ruskell looks back on Bring Me The Horizon's journey so far, his many encounters with them through the years and explains why they're one of our most cherished homegrown acts.

The first time I met Oli Sykes, it was to talk about his tattoos. This was in 2005, when Bring Me The Horizon were simply a new band from Sheffield, yet to release their debut album, and at the time, the ink that already covered the then-teenaged frontman’s frame was more of a talking point for many people than their music. Their This Is What The Edge Of Your Seat Was Made For EP had got their name about, as had their frequent – if often shambolic – shows supporting anyone who’d have them. One Kerrang! review from that early period referred to them as ‘everyone’s favourite Dial-A-Support-Band’ after they were drafted in to support Killswitch Engage at the last minute.

I liked Oli, though. He was a laugh, if a bit awkward under the microscope of an interview, and I liked the band’s spirit. They seemed content to truck along on their own road and not give a fuck about what anyone said about them, not particularly interested in playing by anyone else’s rules. A lot of shit got flung Horizon’s way, but Oli was already having the last laugh – Drop Dead was already making him a decent crust. Good to have, if the band falls apart. That tattoo interview is now woefully inaccurate. Much of the ink Oli spoke about that day is now covered up. And almost none of the reviews from that time tally with what the band would become. All of them pointed to a short future for the band. How wrong could so many people be?

I remember vividly when the temperature around Bring Me The Horizon changed. It was summer 2008, and a promo of second album, Suicide Season, had arrived at the Kerrang! office. It was like listening to a different band entirely. It wasn’t just that they’d pulled their socks up – the songs were brilliant, and with the electronic elements, they were carving something of their own, going down their own path just as they had always done. Only now, people would genuinely like it.

A few weeks later the band played a K! Awards gig at the Camden Barfly (now the Camden Assembly). The atmosphere was like night and day between any show of theirs I’d been to before, and not just because someone in the crowd fired off a can of pepper spray, cutting the last couple of songs short as everyone was evacuated.

“It’s like bumping into someone from school and realising they’ve become sexy,” I wrote in my review. It was like they’d hit reset and started again as a band who could actually do something. When I went to Sheffield to interview them for their first K! cover feature, the change was not lost on the band. “People are having to admit we’ve done something good,” beamed Oli with a chuckle.

But even then, you couldn’t imagine Horizon – or many other British bands of the time, for that matter – doing what they have. But what’s been so amazing about Bring Me The Horizon’s journey isn’t just the confounding of expectation, but the way the band seem to just do their thing, often looking inward, while the rest of the world catches up around them. Two nights at the O2? The Albert Hall? Playing directly under Metallica at Reading and Leeds (“That’s wicked cos you get your logo on the poster when you’re up that high,” one of them enthused at the time)? It’s happened. And they’ve deserved it. Because when it comes to making music, they’ve never looked to anyone else for guidance, and they've just done their own thing. That others have followed them is testament to the power of just getting on with what you want to do.

In all the years I’ve interviewed them, Bring Me The Horizon have never made a boastful “We want to take over the world” statement. And yet they have. The bands who did say that, resolutely, have not. And as someone who’s witnessed their rise (and, indeed, written about a lot of it), it’s been an amazing journey to watch.

You can pick up your copy of Kerrang! in shops right now, or it can be ordered online worldwide from Newsstand. Check out the cover below: