Bring Me The Horizon is one of the biggest bands in the world. Theysat sixthin the ‘most streamed’ metal band category on Spotify last year, behind Linkin Park, Metallica, System of a Down, Limp Bizkit, and Black Sabbath — true heavyweights of the industry.
What differentiates the Sheffield-born artists from their contemporaries, however, is their love forvideo games.
I got to sit down with lead singer Oli Sykes to discuss the impact games have had on his life, the band’s music, and what it was like to hang out withHideo Kojima.
The Impact Of Games On Bring Me The Horizon
Behind music, video games are the second most impactful thing in Sykes’ life, he tells me. The medium has shaped not only the way the band creates music but also how they tell stories and make their videos.
“I think video games, like games likeMetal Gear Solidand stuff, were my first true appreciation for stories as an art form and games as an art form,” Sykes said, adding, “When you’re 12 years old, you like certain movies, and you think they’re cool. Then you grow up, and you realize what they’re about and what they represent. You’re like, ‘Oh, sick. I just liked it because it were gory or whatever.’ But I think games were the first time something actually made me think and actually made me see it as more than just, ‘Oh, this is cool because it’s because there’s blood and guts.’ There’s actually a story here, and there’s actually innovation, and there’s actually just thinking outside the box.”
The band’s music is littered with subtle and unsubtle references to the video game world. They have songs calledParasite EveandShadow Moses, andDear Diaryregularly referencesResident Evil. The music also often contains soundbites from games likeUndertaleand Metal Gear Solid. Sykes says, “We’re always chucking stuff in there. It’s like a homage to video games. I mean, I do liberally steal from the world, but it’s just massive, and it’s just fun to nerd out.”
We’re always chucking stuff in there. It’s like a homage to video games.
Not only do games impact Bring Me The Horizon’s music, but also the live shows they put on. I was recently at the band’s Post Human: NeX GEn tour, which followed the release of their new album, and the show was littered with gaming references. A version of Metal Gear Solid’s Codec adorned the big screens, and the on-screen character E.V.Emakes references to both the N64 and Sega Saturn. All of this is conceptualized by Sykes.
“I come up with all the ideas, I’ll write all the scripts, I’ll write all the jokes, and everything is just because I find it funny or whatever,” he says.
With a couple of months off now, Sykes is writing a “huge bible” of things he wants to do next. He cites Universal Studios as another big inspiration behind the spectacle of their live shows, saying he wants the shows to feel like a simulation at one of the parks. “It’s just me coming up with loads of ideas and throwing sh*t at the wall and seeing what sticks,” Sykes says.
With perceptions of gaming changing, Sykes tells me that he’s now proud to show off his love for the medium: “It’s more fun to wear that on your sleeve rather than trying to act too w**ky about it. It’s just nice to have fun with it. I also think if I was someone in the crowd and I’m a bit of a nerd, just seeing those references would buzz me out.”
Oli Sykes' Gaming History
Metal Gear Solid, which has clearly had a gargantuan impact on Bring Me The Horizon, is Sykes’ favorite game of all time, along with Metal Gear Solid 2 and the Resident Evil series. However, the frontman tells me he also has a love for indie games, citingLimboas one of his favorites, and he called the recent Crow County “super sick.”
In terms of recent memory, Sykes says, “I thinkThe Last of Usis arguably the best game ever made in terms of truly having an emotional connection to a character. I think it’s set a new bar for video games.”
Growing up, before falling in love with the PS1 and survival horror, Sykes was aSegakid. “Sonic the Hedgehogwas what made me love games. I very nearly got a Nintendo, and I just wasn’t bothered, and then I played Sonic at someone’s house once, and that was just it. I was obsessed, and I think I’ve been obsessed with Sonic ever since. I think Sonic and Knuckles is my favorite from that,” he says.
Although Sykes takes hisSteam Deckon tour with him, he had to stop bringing hisPS5. The band does a lot of their writing while touring, and the PS5 proved to be too much of a distraction, with games likeGod of Wartaking up his time.
I think The Last of Us 1 is arguably the best game ever made.
As Sykes has gotten older, though, he’s realized that maybe he’s not as good at gaming as he thought he was. Time constraints meant he had to skipElden Ring, although he wasn’t sure he could crack it anyway. However, games like Metal Gear Rising recently proved a challenge.
“It’s not Souls-like level at all,” he said, “but it is parry-based, and it’s pretty difficult as you get towards the last bosses. When I played it back in the day, I got up to a certain point, and I thought it was the last boss, but actually, there were about two or three bosses left. I just couldn’t get past it at the time. I completed it a couple of weeks ago, though, and honestly, man, it had me tearing my hair out. I can’t even imagine Souls-like.”
Sykes is clearly traumatized by the time he tried to playSekiro: Shadows Die Twice: “I thought I was fighting a boss, and it was just like a random bad guy. I got up to the guy on the horse, and I was like, f*ck, man, I don’t know if this is for me.”
Meeting Hideo Kojima
Being a huge Metal Gear fan, meeting Kojima was a surreal experience for Sykes. He describes the visionary as a “character,” and “really funny”, and shares details of his recent trip to the studio, in which Kojima gave the band a glimpse atDeath Stranding 2, a game which Sykes said the band won’t be appearing in, despite creating Ludens for the first game.
While initially not part of their plans, the band wants to create lore and a narrative for themselves, told across their shows and music, with plans to expand into comics in the not-too-distant future. Sykes sent these comics ahead to Kojima before his visit, and theP.T.creator was full of ideas.
“He’s just, like, an idea machine,” Sykes recalls, “He’s like, you could do this, and you could do that, and you could do that, and you could do that. And he must have come up with about 30 ideas in the space of 10 minutes. Not all of them were amazing, but it’s crazy, and we got a little insight into how he must be.”
Sykes compared his creative style to Kojima, riffing ideas until something good comes up: “he’s a genius, but it’s not refined genius. He goes, let’s do this, let’s do that and eventually, someone goes, ‘wait, that’s good.’ And it’s really inspiring to see. I think I’m very similar in that way, I have a billion ideas, and by the end of the day, all those ideas have changed, and I’ve already hated my ideas.”
I have a billion ideas, and by the end of the day, all those ideas have changed, and I’ve already hated my ideas.
After speaking of his love for the Death Stranding 2 trailer andTroy Baker’sacting, Sykes recalls the process the band went through creatingLudensforDeath Stranding. “I don’t think we had any contact with him [Kojima],” he explains. “I don’t know where the connection came from, because it definitely wasn’t like, ‘oh, Hideo likes your band and wants you to do this.’ I think our connection has been hard-fought. I don’t think we were straightaway his favorite band.”. Regarding the song, Sykes tells me, “The idea came through maybe a month before we were on tour, and then we didn’t hear anything for ages.
“So we thought, they must not be that bothered, and then about ten days before the deadline, they were like ‘we need the song in a week.’” This was a challenge for the band, given that they “don’t write songs in a week, more like months, sometimes half a year from conception to finish.” Working with Kojima was a big driver, however, and Sykes got to work.
With no brief on the game, or what to write, Sykes tells me, “I just did a deep dive, at the time, there wasn’t an awful lot of information about what it was around.” The frontman says that he’d had ideas about wanting to write a geopolitical song next, so things lined up perfectly.
After finishing the record in a week, Sykes remembers being scared: “It was really scary because we had no idea if it was any good. Writing music is a bit like going into a perfume shop and just smelling loads of perfume. At first, you’re like, ‘Well, that’s nice. Well, that one’s good.’ And then after you smell a few more, you’re like, ‘I have no f**king idea what smells good anymore.’ And it’s like that writing music after two, you kind of go from ‘Okay, this is sick. Oh, wait, is this sick? Oh, no, this is f*cking dreadful. This is horrible. I don’t know what I’m doing anymore.’”
Sykes shares how in the early days of his Drop Dead clothing range, many of the designs wereinspiredby Metal Gear, with no approval from Kojima, much like their song Shadow Moses, which borrows the name and sounds from the series. He recalls a time when a former Konami employee showed Kojima the song: “With Shadow Moses, we didn’t get any clearance to use the intro music and stuff. And [the ex-Konami employee] was like, ‘I’ve shown Yoji [Shinkawa], Shadow Moses,’ and I’m like, ‘oh my God, here, we’re caught in an injunction.’” Thankfully, Sykes recalls, they loved it, and the band escaped any legal troubles.
I don’t think we were straightaway his favorite band.
While Sykes says Bring Me The Horizon doesn’t have a song in Death Stranding 2, there are plans to work with Kojima again: “When we had the last meeting, there was a very much feeling of let’s do something crazy together.”
Other Projects
Sykes tells me that Bring Me The Horizon are in talks to make music for another game, but couldn’t share any more details at the time, and he also shared “I’ve always thought it’s criminal thatCall of Dutyhaven’t hit us up to useKingslayer.”
But creating music for a game is something Sykes is really passionate about: “I’d love to do what Mick Gordon did forDoomand soundtrack something, like, make the music for a whole game.” It’s a process that he’s already started thinking about “When I saw Mick last, I was just trying to understand truly how it works. Like when you finish the fight, and the music goes back, and it’s seamless. I’m just really interested in that whole process, so I’d love to do anything like that.”
Outside of music, though, Sykes also tells me they’d love to make a survival-horror game, using themselves as characters, inspired by the likes of the original Resident Evil games or Crow County. He says that these older-style horror games have a “vibe there that you don’t get with the modern-day ones, because you don’t have to wait for the doors to load, and it’s not as scary.”
The Impact Of AI On The World
Sykes confesses his opinions on AI are probably unpopular. “It’s one of those things where we can sit around and get bummed out about it all we want, but it’s happening, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it,” he says, adding, “I get the sentiment, and I get it sucks, but it’s the same when Spotify and everything came along, you know, that f**ked us as a band. We get so little money from Spotify.”
He does say, “AI Isn’t a substitute for creativeness,” and that “I know when I’m reading, if I’m reading an article some way, I just know it, and I hate it.” He says that he still trusts human opinion, admitting to reading game reviews before going out and purchasing a $70 game, but admits AI can be useful when used as a tool.
Writing a story for the band, Sykes admits he uses AI to check for any inconsistencies, “and it’s f**king incredible for that, it’s like having a ghostwriter,” but he says he would never tell it to write anything for him because it would, “just give me some bullsh*t.”
Instead, he feels that AI might have a somewhat positive impact on the world once things have settled down. “It’s making everyone have to up their game,” he says, adding that, “across industries, it’s just going to weed out the people that don’t really love what they do, and I think it’s going to push the people that are doing something truly special to the top.” He thinks this could lead to the next big innovations in movies, TV, music, and games.
Regardless of his thoughts on AI, Sykes is living the dream, combining his love for video games with his band’s unique sounds, meeting his gaming idol in the process, and its exciting to see how much further this melding will go in the future.
Bring Me The Horizon’s POST HUMAN: NeX GEn is out now, with thephysical release coming on September 27.
