oli sykes bring me the horizon bmth

Bring Me The Horizon’s early years revisited on the AP podcast

Years before Bring Me The Horizon would revolutionize the music scene, become a name to be reckoned with on their monumental breakthrough record, Sempiternal, and sonically reinvent themselves on amo, they were a young band trying to figure out why everyone in the crowd wanted to record their shows to post on Myspace. 

Read more: Bring me The Horizon considering multiple “shorter” records in 2020.

In this AltPress archive interview from 2009, Alternative Press president/founder Mike Shea sat down with  Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes and drummer Matt Nicholls to discuss the band’s sophomore release, Suicide Season, their struggle to actively make sense of the public’s fixation on their image, as well as the New Found Glory song that helped Nicholls cut his teeth behind the drum kit. Nicholls also reveals how the gigs back then are always better when Sykes is drunk. (“He’s a shy guy. I think alcohol brings him out of his shyness a little bit.”)

Recorded before Bring Me The Horizon embarked on the 2009 Taste Of Chaos tour with Thursday, Pierce The Veil and Four Year Strong (and landed on the cover of AP #248), this candid interview finds Sykes and Nicholls navigating through the heights of polarizing Bring Me buzz, offering a rare glimpse at BMTH as they rapidly approach a pivotal turning point in their career—all while remaining blissfully oblivious to their impending megastardom. 

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Or were they? Given how BMTH have made game-changing strides in their continued evolution, this early chat brings the band’s sense of promise to the forefront. It also displays a sense of determination that Sykes has always had for his band, even in their earliest days.

“We started this band to play shows, basically,” Nicholls tells Shea. “Because we loved going to shows and watching bands. And that’s what we wanted to do.”