This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
Artist Interviews
Q&A: Bring Me The Horizon
By CMU Editorial | Published on Tuesday 23 November 2010
Formed in 2004, Bring Me The Horizon released their debut album, ‘Count Your Blessings’ in 2006 via Visible Noise. 2008’s ‘Suicide Season’ saw them progress to a more metalcore sound, which they explored further on this year’s ‘There Is a Hell, Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is a Heaven, Let’s Keep It a Secret’. Next month the band are due to support Bullet For My Valentine on their UK arena tour. Ahead of that, we spoke to frontman Oli Sykes.
Q1 How did you start out making music?
When me and my mates were about fourteen, we used to just jam out in my garage – none of us could play our instruments or anything, but we’d try! From there I’d just practice doing heavy vocals and screaming in my room, until me and Matt, our drummer, ended up in a band together – which was shit too! We were called Years Of Ephemera. Then we went off to college and Matt met our guitarists Lee Malia and Curtis Ward [the latter left the band in 2009]. Matt asked me if I wanted to make another band with them and that was that.
Q2 What inspired your latest album?
Heaven and Hell. The album is kind of conceptual and is about Heaven and Hell being an ocean inside of everyone rather than some place where you go to when you die.
Q3 What process do you go through in creating a track?
Me and Lee sit down and work out the core of the song – the riffs and the structure. Then we put some drums and some bass to it, put the lyrics in and there you have your classic BMTH track! We’ve always done it the same. Inspiration comes at really random times so we just try things as they come.
Q4 Which artists influence your work?
Dire Straits, Pink Floyd and even Freddie Mercury is an inspiration to me as a musician. People might find that strange, considering the type of music we play, but there’s a lot of classic rock influences on the new album.
Q5 What would you say to someone experiencing your music for the first time?
I’d say “Get ready” and wink at them! Seriously though, we write music for ourselves so I’d tell people to have an open mind. A lot of the people that listen to our music – metalcore fans or not – are really diverse and we take in a lot of different styles with the new album. So I suppose people would need an open mind listening to our music, whether they are listening for the first time or not, and I hope people have that when listening to any music really.
Q6 What are your ambitions for your latest album, and for the future?
We’ve never really had any ambition for this band. Ever. Crazy things keep on happening for us – for example yesterday we were told that we had an number one chart album in Australia, when we didn’t even think the band would leave our garage in Sheffield way back when. I don’t want to start having ambitions and goals and then not meet them and then get bitter. I also don’t want things to come as less of a surprise when awesome things happen because I was thinking, yeah that was my ambition, I expected that.
We want to carry on touring and doing things they way we want to, but I wouldn’t really say that was an ambition really. That’s just carrying on like we are now.
MORE>> www.horizondeathcult.com
