Last week, Bring Me The Horizon started a new chapter in their seeming neverending creative story with the release of the emo ballad sTraNgeRs. Today, ahead of their visit to Australia to headline Good Things Festival, keyboardist and production wizard, Jordan Fish joined Maniacs for a chat about the next phase in the sonic evolution of Bring Me The Horizon.
Bring Me The Horizon are finally heading back down under to play the Good Things Festival, after the chaos of the last few years are you looking forward to being back on our shores?
"Very much so. It's been a little while since we last played Australia, so I'm really excited. It was the first place I toured with the band, and it remains one of my favourite places to play. We've got lots of friends there. So we are very excited to get back."
Bring Me The Horizon have evolved your sound quite a bit since your last visit, releasing the first POST HUMAN EP, a few big collabs and two additional singles. What was the impetus that cross-genre exploration?
"Initially the idea was that we could release music faster and more often. While we haven't really done that, one thing this approach has done is allowed us to give each record its own vibe. We did amo and if there's one thing I regret about that record it was that we didn't go 'all-in' on a vibe as much. I feel like it works better when each record is its own kind of vibe to some extent. So I guess the idea was to try and be able to do different, slightly different iterations of 'Bring Me' with each record we do. So we can kind of set it up, so that people know what they're going to get."
I think people would be surprised to learn that you feel you're moving slowly because from a listener's perspective it seems you have been constantly releasing content, be it new songs, collaborations, or videos, there always seems to be something happening with Bring Me The Horizon. Do you feel there's something about the writing partnerships in the band that allows for that to be the case?
"We've been a little stuck on this record, to be fair, so it is a bit of a bad time to answer that question, beause I'm feeling the opposite way, right now. I do feel like we make a bit of a rod for our own backs a little bit, by trying to do something different every time. It's not actually the easiest way to work. It would be easier to just sit down and bang out ten songs and not really care about the result and whether it sounds different. But we feel like we've got to discover something everytime that we make a new record. Which makes it more challenging, but it makes it more fun for us as well. Keeps it fresh. The band has existed for 20 years and I've been in the band for 10 years and every new song that we write still feels critical to me."
"Writing sTraNgeRs didn't feel like just writing another song, it felt like writing the most important song of our career and it felt like that on the last one and the one before that. We have that feeling all of the time. We don't want to drop a shit song. We don't want someone to say "oh that sounds like a boring progression". We do try and push it forward, because we care about the band and what we're putting out. "
That's definitely evident on sTraNgeRs, you can tell a lot of thought has gone into not just the writing of the track, but the rollout as well. Did it feel particularly important to be sharing this message with the world in this way, right now?
The lyric from Oli "we're just a room full of strangers" came from the idea of being at a live show. At a show you're standing in a room full of strangers, but then you also feel this connection to everyone singing along. It's like this primitive feeling of community. It sort of grew from there. When Oli is working with a concept that isn't personal to him, he likes to find links to a meaning for him that is personal to his life. It has to work on multiple levels. So while for us, it works as a live song, but for Oli it has this deeper meaning connected to a time he experienced in rehab, when he was talking to a room full of people he didn't know about his addiction. So he has all of these deep, internal thoughts, while I'm just dabbling around a computer. He's on some whole other level, finding a way to connect it personally to him, and I feel like that always makes a song stronger.
At his point, Oli Sykes is a mainstream celebrity, does it feel a bit odd or perhaps even surreal having a member of the band that is in such a bright spotlight?
" If he was a dickhead then it would be a problem. Because if you're the singer in a band, then everyone's focus is going to be on you. So it is really down to how the singer deals with that, and whether they let that impact their ego to an extent where they don't feel that they need a band anymore. Luckily, he's not that type of person, so it doesn't bother any of us in the slightest. He is more and more famous the bigger the band has become, but ultimately that's a good thing for all of us because it means more people like our band."
You've been involved in a lot of collaborations recently, with the likes of Ed Sheeran, MGK and Sigrid? Do you have a favourite song out of them all?
"The Ed Sheeran one is Ed Sheeran's song, and the MGK song is MGK's song, so it'd be the Sigrid one because we wrote the song. They're all great in their own ways though. The MGK song is a fun song and it opened us up to a different audience. Sigrid is a really good friend of mine and I love her as an artist and as a person. That was a special one because it came together so nicely and she was a pleasure to work with, I love that we had that experience working together. Sheeran was honestly cool as fuck. When he asked us, we couldn't quite believe that we were being asked to perform at the opening of the Brits. The BRIT Awards is a huge thing in the UK and that was just such a surreal experience. That hugely helped our career and I'm not even sure he realises how much he has helped our career just by having us perform one song with him has been."
I don't think people from our corner of the world can really fathom just how famous Ed Sheeran is, it's another level of fame, isn't it?
It is eye-opening man, when you meet people like that. He's one of those people that is still super down to earth, which is crazy. Because when you get to that level, it's very rare that you ever manage to retain any of yourself. But he is so down-to-earth and normal, that it's actually kinda weird. He's a very cool guy and super nice."
Where do you go from here? What's the upwards trajectory for Bring Me The Horizon?
"At this point, I've got two kids and a family, so I'm not really as worried about getting bigger or smaller as I used to be. We're out playing a bunch of festivals at the moment and we're having a great time hanging out together and that's what matters. We are reaching that point where we are just enjoying the ride. We don't need to be the biggest band in the world, we are who we are and as long as we keep enjoying what we do and put the same level of effort in, then we'll be good. That's all I care about. I just want to be happy."
Also, if you ever need a dopamine boost, you can just look at this Good Things Festival poster and see your name above the alt-metal gods Deftones, and blow your teenage self's mind!
"I feel bad answering that, because I'm such a big Deftones fan. I would not even try and compare our careers, because they're just legends. They've been so enormously influential to me personally, they might actually be my favourite band of all time to be honest, Deftones. I'm just so excited to get to play with them. We've only had a chance to play with them a couple of times. We supported them once in America and it was just insanely good. We're just huge fans of the band. "
In the spirit of the Good Things Festival, what are the good things in your life outside of music, Jordan?
"I've got two kids that I quite like and my wife, that's enough for me!"
If you could have any song play as you enter a room, pro-wrestling style, what song would you like it to be?
"The Boys Are Back In Town. That'd be a good intro song."
Looking to the next record is sTraNgeRs illustrative of what the future of Bring Me The Horizon sounds like?
"Kind of, the two singles we've released, we won't go exactly there again, but it'll be in that world to some extent. Some will contrast well with those songs. There might be some slightly heavier stuff on there. There's a lot of subgenres around that we are trying to take and modernize a little. sTraNgeRs is sorta a mainstream emo style song, DiE4u has more of a pop-emo vibe, but there's so many screamo and post-hardcore influences that we're exploring that could end up on the record too."
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