Bring Me The Horizon vocalist Oli Sykes kneeled in the upper middle of the band’s elaborate stage setup, as a mixture of red confetti and streamers draped the 20,000+ fans in Madison Square Garden in New York this past Saturday night. His close-cut platinum hair is covered in sweat as he screamed and sang his heart out for a little under two hours. The claps and “woooo” from the fans overtook him. With tears in his eyes, he looked all across the arena and managed to get out, “Oh fu–king hell.” Drummer Matt Nicholls tapped his heart and raised his hand to the sky in what felt like an eternity of gratitude.
When we first start following a band, we naturally become attached to the era we fell in love with. But I would say that template is different from Bring Me The Horizon. Each release has been a more defined progression than the next. 2008’s “Suicide Season” shed the deathcore skin of “Count Your Blessings” and made way for a fusion of those two eras in 2010’s “There Is a Hell…”2013’s “Sempiternal“ pulled together a confluence of styles from alternative rock, pop rock, and post-hardcore, culminating in the even more accessible 2015’s “That’s The Spirit” and 2019’s “amo.” The series of “Post Human” projects sees the band at the height of their experimental and collaborative powers while still retaining an edge.
“The Mecca” hosted legendary acts such as Elton John, Billy Joel, The Rolling Stones, and Stevie Wonder, and would be the victory lap for N. American Ascension Program 2. Imagine PlayStation making a rock concert, with heavy inspiration from the classic Resident Evil, Dino Crisis, and Metal Gear Solid PS1 games. There were interludes in which digital avatars spoke of fictitious churches, viruses, experiments, and demonic possession. It was fun to see the crowd experience the anxiety of a Solid Snake codec call, and it reminded me of the time when the gray, square console ate up so much of my time and imagination.
The two-story stage changed as the levels within an action-adventure game do. For example, during “Kool-Aid,” an evil angel raises its arms in sync with the fire pyrotechnics, reminiscent of larger-than-life boss fights. The stage was Bring Me The Horizon’s playground, and they encouraged the crowd to be a part of the performance in more ways than one. A cameraman moved through the crowd throughout the evening, capturing real-time footage of excited and exhausted fans as they yelled and moshed from one song to the next. During “Antivist,” Sykes called up a superfan from Brazil to sing the entire song with a “Guitar Hero” template on screen. The singer would assist with rough vocals here and there, smiling and watching from an elevated part of the stage.
There’s a happy realization that Bring Me The Horizon had become something bigger than they may have intended. The melodies grew more defined, the music became more mainstream, and Sykes’s low, bellowing growls were redefined as an impressive singing voice; but Bring Me The Horizon retained that against-the-grain aura while broadening their musical accessibility. Before they performed their first encore track, “Doomed,” a video retrospective of the band’s career with an orchestral arrangement of the song played in the background. A short clip of the band’s infamous 2016 NME Awards performance, where Skyes stood on Coldplay’s table and proceeded to trash it, launching into “Happy’s Song” breakdown. Bassist Matt Kean would also drop his bass right onto another table because why not? Bring Me The Horizon were approaching another echelon of rock-band ascension, but were almost repulsed at the thought of going into it quietly.
In one space, Sykes is a maestro directing symphonies of the multiple circle pits and walls of death during the up-tempo, thrashy “The House of Wolves” and defiant “Antivist.” On the flipside, a fan is shown on screen reaching out and crying to the love-can-beat-the-odds ballad, “Follow You.” It’s an impressive balance to strike – becoming more accessible while retaining most of the gusto of why you started in the first place. Saturday night’s setlist was focused on the band’s history from 2013 on. There was a “Pray For Plagues” joke thrown into the excitement of the crowd and the band as they prepared to revisit their first album with a re-recording and a series of concerts. On this night, Bring Me The Horizon was focused on and loving the current moment.
At around 10:45, they had just finished their last song, “Throne,” from the album that would ultimately set them on this path. When Sykes spoke about the song in 2014, he said, “It felt like our comeback song.” The four kids from Sheffield, England, who once made an album “as brutal as they could” with “Count Your Blessings” in 2006, ended one of their biggest shows with a straightforward, catchy alternative-rock empowerment anthem. Throughout their seven-album discography, the band has developed a penchant for growth, carrying them from the shores of their boll-cut Warped Tour beginnings and death metal inspirations.
During “Drown,” Sykes went alongside the barricade with a small camera and sang the entire song, embracing every fan in his line of sight. It was a shared triumph by the band that used to play the Smart Punk Stage at Warped Tour, making it all the way to one of the world’s most storied arenas, and by the people, both old and new, who came from all over to see the fruits of their labor. Bring Me The Horizon used to tell you to “party till you pass out / drink till you’re dead.” They are still rip-roaring, dancing, and headbanging, but living to fight another day with more to say.
