LIVE REVIEW: Bring Me The Horizon – M&S Bank Arena, Liverpool – 17/01/2024

Remember when Zane Lowe curated a re-score for the film Drive, and Bring Me The Horizon were on it collaborating with Foreign Beggars? And when the heavily produced, drum ‘n’ bass-ish final product made it out into the wild (to expected backlash in 2014), the justification was “well, it’s a one-off; they aren’t going to necessarily keep sounding like this”? Well…that was kind of wrong, wasn’t it? And yet, had Bring Me The Horizon not strode so far from their initial deathcore paddock, they wouldn’t be nearly as big as they are now. In the home leg of a world tour, they are, without question, one of the biggest rock bands on the planet, all through a penchant to cybernetically augment modern metal in a way that’s been oft replicated, but never bested. It’s clearly working when the entire contingent of Liverpool’s emos are flocked under the one roof, in a very rare occurrence of a huge, celebrated metal band with a famously killer live show actually bothering to make the stop here at all.

It’s similarly impressive how well they know their audience too, when the bill is clearly stacked to wring the most momentum and potential from this specific moment Bring Me The Horizon occupy. Static Dress are always striking live with how much gets piled onto their heaviness, for the kind of throwback to 2000s screamo that ensures its bladelike incisiveness is kept untouched. Even when the gear of the acts to follow piled behind them will narrow their movement options considerably, Olli Appleyard isn’t the kind of performer to let that mitigate a completely domineering presence. Likewise is Cassyette, another artist thriving in the live space thanks to a harder, industrial edge affixed to these big dark-pop / nu-metal songs that already have an edge on her contemporaries. The blatant, distracting nature of nu-gen’s artifice is swallowed up and spat out by the sheer size of it all, no less because Cassyette herself is a legit presence as a singer and screamer. The lockstep dance-rock march of Ipecac is a fine line to draw in mixing things up, as well, clearly a sign of far more to come when that debut drops in August.

But then there’s Bad Omens, a band with whom people have grown freakishly obsessed for no adequately evident reason. Sure, they’re in the same roundabout musical quotient as the rest of their touring buddies, but mild pattern recognition really doesn’t do it in this case. It’s certainly appropriate to have them accompanied by AI interludes and visuals of robots, given how mechanically all of this slots into place. Maybe that’s just par for the course for this breed of ‘baddiecore’ (ugh…), seeing as they get a hefty reaction to being just…fine. The chugs do land, and the programming does have a suitably colourless, metal finish; they’re also the most visually accomplished band of the night so far. But it’s also hard to escape how churned-out this all feels, revelling in proficiency ahead of anything more noteworthy. Even if Noah Sebastian is a good singer, he’s still nothing out of the ordinary, in any case. To be somewhat charitable, the closing pair of Just Pretend and Dethrone is the closest to locked-in success Bad Omens get—the former has the chorus to justify being, as Sebastian puts it, “one of the bigger ones”, and the latter is a solidly heavy closer. Otherwise, Bad Omens are completely fine at what they do, with nothing else to speak of until they can add something to their arsenal.

And if you want to see what that can look like…well, a half-hour interim is all it takes, because Bring Me The Horizon arepractically the overlords of that wavelength right now. It’s no shock—they have been for ages—but when the conscious effort is made to one-up themselves time and time again, that’s not nothing. Frankly, the effort put into dazzling visuals can floor in its own right, in a quasi-storyline about escaped experiments relayed by the AI narrator EVE. Beholden to the curt mantra of ‘cool and edgy’ as it may be, you still find yourself gawking at the big, decaying angel smashing through the church backdrop on Kool-Aid, and become fully enraptured by the spectacle. Same with CG cyberpunk dancers filling in for Babymetal on Kingslayer, or the draugr warrior with its flaming scythe on Throne, or Daryl Palumbo’s screaming head on a communion wafer on AmEN!—if it’s big and cool and can be done, why not do it?

Suffice it to say, they’re still consummate showmen, particularly with what’s likely the biggest budget for a large-scale thing like this they’ve ever had. On top of even all that, the usual arena bells and whistle are here, with the CO2 cannons and the pyro and the confetti and the laser displays. Bring Me The Horizon are, without question, comfortable splurging to deliver one hell of a show, and there’s just something about how tightly choreographed it all is to keep it consistently thrilling and impactful. The band themselves are actually rather restrained, more comfortable with letting the spectacle play out around them than being amongst it. The only time there’s really much involvement is in Oli Sykes’ back-and-forth with EVE when previewing new, unreleased songs. Apparently, the new album is coming this summer and in the process of getting finished (the crowd is goaded into recording gang vocals for an as-yet-untitled track), but the snippets aired do sound rather promising already.

Not to dwell on them too much when there’s not a lot there, but they’re very in-line with Bring Me The Horizon’s current train of creative mojo. The cutting-edge metal thing is provided a lot of runway for them, so it makes to stick to that, but also when it consistently goes off, there’s no real reason to walk away. This is a set heavily skewed towards recent work, in the environment it was built for and with the quality of sound to let every note and beat of nu-metal crunch drop hard. DArkSide is the opener, as the initial display of maturation into this fresh breed of arena band; similar cues come from Teardrops and Die4U and Kingslayer, all nestled in their own spots within an ever-growing modern metal cache. They all sound phenomenal, that goes without saying, but the elephant in the room of Jordan Fish’s recent departure does need to be addressed somewhat. His production was what really elevated Bring Me The Horizon to their current echelon of enormity, and while it’ll be a greater test on record, it’s pleasing to see the ramifications of his absence live are pretty minimal. There’s still the hefty crunch and roar of a thick carapace, which remains a reliably wall-shattering tool within their kit.

It’s a stylistic choice that’s not as tied to some of their older material, though that remains a wise choice. Particularly on Diamonds Aren’t Forever, the sole cut from an era of Bring Me The Horizon that feels literally a million years old, you want that to give off an air of scrappy, ground-level bite, in which the chain-link fence backdrop and Static Dress’ Olli Appleyard bounding out for an assist more than accomplish. More prominently though, Sempiternal is the era to really zero in on, where Bring Me The Horizon’s arena ambitions tessellate the cleanest in sound and scope. Empire (Let Them Sing) is a relative deep cut to get that feeling off the ground, but then there’s Drown and Can You Feel My Heart, towering immovably. To many, that’s the definitive turning point of Bring Me The Horizon’s legacy, and to see it held with such continued reverence does feel pretty special, even over a decade later. They’ve certainly moved on since—they’re a completely different band from when they started, and would never have ended up had they continued like that—but you feel throughout how Bring Me The Horizon haven’t just sloughed off what they were and left it to rot. It’s been cultivated and reshaped, worked into who they are now in small but noticeable doses. And say what you want about the state of their current material, but a metal band on this level, playing by their own rules this predominantly, is a feat worth marveling at. As of now, Bring Me The Horizon continues to be in a league of their own.

Words by Luke Nuttall