Bring Me the Horizon, O2 Arena, review: the exhilarating catharsis of metal and moshing
“I need a f---ing circle pit and I won’t take no for an answer,” came the demand from Oli Sykes in his thick Yorkshire accent, two songs in to Bring Me The Horizon’s riotous gig at the O2 Arena on Sunday night. “All you gotta do is run around in a circle like f---ing mad.”
As restrictions have lifted and big gigs have started again, the O2 has been at the front of live music’s re-activation over the past couple of months, with banner gigs from Gorillaz and Liam Gallagher providing a joyous release after a year and a half without the power and connection of live music. For Bring Me the Horizon, the first metal band to tread Greenwich’s biggest boards post-Covid, it was a similar feeling, albeit one of a more violent release, where being a spectator can be much more of a contact sport.
“That was a five-out-of-ten pit, second worst of the tour,” Sykes laughingly criticised at one point, upgrading his opinion to full marks after more than half of those in the arena’s standing area had been caught up in the human riptide. “If you wanna come over the barrier and give me a high-five, do it.”
Security must love him. But on a mass scale like this, inspiring such chaos is genuinely impressive, particularly in the hands of Sykes, half besuited icon, half mischievous trouble-maker. But that was just one bullet point in the long list of reasons why Bring Me the Horizon have, over the past 16 years, become one of the best, biggest and most creative rock bands in the world.
Musically, metal is just the starting point. The thrashing Dear Diary, from last year’s brilliant Post-Human: Survival Horror EP acted as a superb metal incendiary device, but there were more hearty, singalong moments (Drown), pop (Medicine), and heaviness in myriad forward-thinking forms. The bonkers, Prodigy-ish techno-metal of Kingslayer was immediately followed by a gentle version of Follow You, performed on acoustic guitar and piano, during which Sykes visibly welled up. Even when things got out of hand and the encore of Throne had to be halted in order for medics to get an injured fan out of the melee, it didn’t dip the energy – it just gave things even more heart.
It is, however, in the way Bring Me the Horizon present themselves – as a mind-blowing spectacle – that makes them such a thrilling live act. The visuals that made up each song’s enormous, multi-screen 3D backdrops were an explosion of things designed to fry the eyes. For the sarcastic Wonderful Life, a colourful, cartoonish world made of crayon drawings; for Dear Diary, zombies that appeared to run across the stage. During Ludens, meanwhile, the screens formed a Tron-like prison of light around the band, which then spun dizzyingly, as if the stage itself were moving.
Then there are the dancers. Appearing as silver robot cheerleaders for the chanted chorus of That’s the Spirit, or else in hazmat suits during the apt and apocalyptic Parasite Eve, they were a brilliant, energetic touch in a show with revs already in the red.
What all this added up to was glorious catharsis, and throughout, the need for this from both sides of the stage was intoxicating. No rock or metal band on Earth are doing quite what Bring Me the Horizon do. And by the time anyone catches up, they’ll have had another load of ideas – ideas that both underline and challenge what arena rock shows are supposed to be about, and just how exciting they can – and should – be.
