Bring Me The Horizon dropped out of a 2006 festival after being threatened by another artist on the lineup.
Talking in the new issue of Metal Hammer, singer Oli Sykes looks back on the controversy the Yorkshire metal band attracted with their 2006 debut, Count Your Blessings, ahead of the release of a re-recorded version, Count Your Blessings Repented, on July 10.
“We said we were sick [when we dropped out of the festival], because there were another band there that said when we got there, they were going to shave all our hair off and beat us up. It were mental at first,” the frontman recalls.
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“It were that era, when people latched onto something, like, ‘We hate this band, we hate My Chemical Romance.’ It were everyone.”
Not only were Bring Me one of the first metal bands to make a name for themselves through social media, fostering their early fanbase via MySpace, but their early deathcore sound and ‘trendy’ look – with hairsprayed fringes and studded belts – also rubbed purists the wrong way.
In 2007, at a show supporting Killswitch Engage, the audience turned their backs on the band out of protest.
“It was very hostile. We didn’t go looking for it whatsoever,” Sykes remembers. “We just had to tread that line between getting on with the gig and looking like it didn’t hurt us, but, you know, backstage after gigs, it did affect us a lot.”
The singer adds that he, 19 at the time, and his bandmates weren’t properly press-trained, leading to journalists twisting their words and mischaracterising them. During one interview in the Count Your Blessings era, a reporter brought up how pictures of Sykes naked had leaked online.
“He was like, ‘Oh, so your dick’s on the internet? Do you like the fact your dick’s on the internet?’ And I was like, ‘No, who would want a picture of their dick on the internet?’,” Sykes says. “And it said I’d leaned in and I was snarling at him.
“We didn’t have no media training, we weren’t briefed and we were very naive. When we got the magazine, my mum were really upset. Everything that was a joke or lighthearted, he’d twisted it to sound aggressive in tone… we were on our guard after that.”
Bring Me discarded their deathcore sound after Count Your Blessings, moving towards metalcore and then, from 2013’s Sempiternal and especially 2015’s That’s The Spirit, a more pop-oriented sound. The re-recording of the album follows the band’s long-standing dissatisfaction with the sound quality of the original, as Sykes explains.
“I still can remember pretty clearly, coming out of the studio in Birmingham – we had it burned to a disc, and I put it on in my car. I had this huge subwoofer in the boot,” he says. “I was so unhappy with the way it sounded.
“I obviously loved playing shows, but the way I feel about our music now when I get onstage and play certain songs – I’m like, ‘I fucking love this song!’ – I can’t remember ever feeling that way about it.”
Bring Me are currently touring the European festival circuit, with the next show scheduled for Tuesday (June 9) at Tauron Arena in Krakow, Poland. On July 10, the same day that the Repented re-recording comes out, they’ll play Count Your Blessings in full at B.E.C. Arena in Manchester. Static Dress, Rolo Tomassi, Heriot, Dying Wish, Car Underwater and Still In Love will support.
Read the full interview with Sykes in the new Hammer, which features Evanescence on the cover and tells the story of their new album, Sanctuary. Order your copy now and get it delivered directly to your door.
