Updated 2024-07-02 12.41 | Published 2024-07-01 23.55
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fullscreenBring Me The Horizon singer Oli Sykes knows how to engage an audience. Photo: Andreas Bardell
CONCERT Bring Me The Horizon has grown into a full-fledged arena band that sometimes sets hearts on fire, sometimes plasters over deep wounds.
The gig at Sthlm Fields is as much a hormone-driven roller coaster as a therapy session.
Bring Me The Horizon
Place: Sthlm Fields, Stockholm. Public: Around 12,000 people. Length: 90 minutes. Best: “Kool-aid”, “Parasite eve” and “Can you feel my heart” are effective live songs. The interaction between the audience and the band is also something out of the ordinary. Worst: That Oli Syke’s voice is sometimes drowned in the music.
Just over 20 years ago was accused Bring Me The Horizon and metalcore to be a fly that would soon be gone.
The critics were wrong. Like a hungry tick, both the band and the music genre have hung on and grown to unimaginable proportions.
On the latest album “Post human: Next gen”, the Sheffield act also swings into the future with a digitally imprinted and fast-paced soundscape cut and sliced for a young audience. The song “Dig it” contains a QR code and features an AI-generated avatar named Eve.
The Brits are also bringing their futuristic concept on tour.
Eve appears before the performance on two screens on each side of the stage and speaks directly to the audience.
“Are you ready for a post human experience?” she asks before scanning the crowd for mosh pits and contraband.
Then the band members strut confidently onto the stage and take their positions on a two-tiered platform draped in red fabrics. In the background hangs a backdrop representing a Gothic-style church, which gives the feeling that they will be speaking in front of a congregation.
It was Sykes is the obvious preacher. But instead of reading from a Bible, the singer unfolds his private diary entries for public viewing.
The opening number “Darkside” from the new album is a roughly three-minute long therapy session that airs and ventilates suicidal thoughts and the importance of support. The audience knows the lyrics like running water.
Even new songs such as “Kool-aid”, “Lost” and “Top 10 statues that cried blood” are met with open arms by a peppy audience who don’t care that it’s Monday.
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fullscreen Bring Me The Horizon’s song material is in many ways singer Oli Sykes’ public therapy sessions. Photo: Andreas Bardell
Sykes has reached the age of 37 but is like a vampire stuck in adolescence. The frontman alternates between violently raging roars and vulnerable beautiful vocals that open up the tattooed chest and expose a heart scarred by mental illness, addiction and divorce.
No matter what is thrown the audience’s way – tear-dropping “Teardrops”, the doomsday sermon “Amen!” or the club compatible Babymetal-the collaboration “Kingslayer” – it is done with a passion and power that is matched with spectacular pyrotechnics and dramatic lighting.
“Throne”, which brings to mind Linkin Park and Chester Benningtons harrowing vocals, is a powerful manifesto once morest bullies and critics that contains an apt description of the band’s career:
“Every wound will shape me/Every scar will build my throne.”
With the inalienable crowd pleaser “Can you feel my heart”, the Brits make it all the way across the finish line to a holy land where metalcore is the law and Bring Me The Horizon regents.
The encores are the reward following a sweaty journey and dizzying therapy session.
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FACT
All the songs
1. Darkside 2. Empire (let them sing) 3. Mantra 4. Teardrops 5. Amen! 6. Kool-aid 7. Shadow moses 8. Obey 9. Top 10 statues that cried blood 10. Kingslayer 11. Parasite eve 12. Antivist 13. Drown 14. Can you feel my heart Encore: 15. Doomed 16. Lost 17. Throne
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