Oli Sykes says Bring Me The Horizon “can’t be the band that we used to be”
Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has claimed it would be inauthentic if Bring Me The Horizon tried to sound like “the band that we used to be”.
While the Sheffield natives started out as a metalcore band, as they’ve achieved mainstream success, Bring Me The Horizon have changed their sound to the frustration of a portion of their fanbase. However, in a new interview, Sykes has explained why their evolution has happened naturally and revealed he does take comments onboard.
“I think I’ve managed over recent years to soften my approach to what those… It’s very easy for them people to piss you off and you’re just, like, ‘Fuck off.’ But at the end of the day they just love your band and something you did meant so much to them that they just want you to do it again,” he told the Arizona radio station KFMA.
“And you’ve just gotta realise that even though it might annoy you, it comes from a place of love. And rather than fighting back, you’ve just gotta appreciate that and appreciate the fact that… and sometimes maybe it even makes you question yourself as well,” Sykes continued.
He added: “To a certain degree, we can’t be the band that we used to be. We wouldn’t know how to do it, and we wouldn’t know how to do it with any authenticity or integrity. Because we grow and we age and we mature and our tastes change, the same like the way your taste buds change; it just does, and there’s nothing you can do about that. But sometimes those people can remind you, like, ‘Wait. Are we losing what makes us special?’ And that’s what I’ve asked myself over the years. It’s, like, some people that are sad because we’re not as heavy anymore or whatever, do they have a point?””
Later in the conversation, he explained why Bring Me The Horizon are incapable of writing songs for anybody but themselves, but can still listen to feedback from fans. Sykes said: “We can’t write music for the fans; it’s impossible. But we can let what they say resonate with us and not just automatically, like, knee-jerk reaction of like, ‘Fuck you. We’ll do what we want.’”
Sykes’ latest comments come ahead of the release of Bring Me The Horizon’s new album POST HUMAN: NeX GEn, arriving on September 15th. Earlier this summer, the Yorkshire band headlined Download Festival and will play a series of headline dates in arenas across the United Kingdom next year.
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