In May of this year, Bring Me The Horizon released the highly anticipated album POST HUMAN: NeX GeN , following the acclaimed POST HUMAN: Survival Horror from 2020. According to the band, this pair of releases would kick off a series of albums titled POST HUMAN.
The project – which will be presented to Brazilian fans in November when the band performs in São Paulo – was conceived during the COVID-19 quarantine, when the group sought to release several interconnected albums, yet with individual characteristics, in rapid succession.
“It took longer than we said it would, I know…”, said vocalist Oli Styles during an interview with Kerrang!. The musician is referring to the four years between releases, a gap that fans didn't expect and the band hadn't planned for.
The interview took place remotely, with Oli at his home in Brazil, where he lives with his Brazilian wife Alissa Salls and spent the quarantine. During the conversation, Oli said that he thought we would be stuck indoors for years and suddenly found himself touring for thousands of people, making Survival bigger than he had imagined.
Explaining the album's concept and the tour visuals the band has adopted since then, he said: “The first album was more of a battle cry: we're angry, we're scared, basically just screaming about all the things that scared us, the pandemic and everything else, and the second one is more like, 'Okay, what do we do with this?'”
Oli also began to question his health: “I thought I was cured, but in reality I was distracted,” he said. “I was feeding off all the love the band gets, and the streaming and the tours and everything else. And when all that disappeared, I went back to drugs in a matter of months.”
Oli was suffering from a relapse and tried to find a cure in NeX GEn , but there was a problem that affected not only him but the entire band: the departure of Jordan Fish at the end of last year. The musician, who served as a complement to Oli, became a huge loss and made the vocalist reflect on how things would work in the studio from now on.
“Me and Jordan were like a force. We turned the 'Oli and Jordan Show' into something else without really realizing it,” he said during an interview with Revolver (via Loudwire ). The partnership sidelined guitarist Lee Malia , bassist Matt Kean , and drummer Matt Nicholls in songwriting and production.
“Since I got out of rehab, shortly before Sempiternal (2013) , I really had to focus on something, and I think it was music. I got hooked on writing and learning to sing and produce, and Jordan was my partner in that kind of pursuit. We wrote all the time, I didn’t realize how much we pushed the other guys away.”
The frontman also commented that he hasn't spoken to Jordan Fish since his split with the band, and that it will still take some time for the wounds to heal. “I’m not going to lie and say, ‘Oh, it was amicable and we all ended on good terms (…) [but] at the same time, there will be some wounds on both sides that will take a little longer to heal [before] we can talk about the terms of communication again.”
“I’ll never say a bad word about Jordan in terms of the creativity he brought,” Oli continued. “He taught me how to sing. He taught me a lot about music, and I think he’d probably agree that I taught him a lot in a different way. But I always knew what I wanted. I always have a vision with our albums and our songs. And so no matter who we’re working with or what it is – we’ll get there, one way or another.”
According to Oli, carrying the weight of a quarantine, a relapse, and the departure of his friend from the band, he entered his creative process feeling a need to be true to himself and create the music that he truly believes is his identity and that of the band.
Bring Me The Horizon will be coming to Brazil for a single show in São Paulo, at Allianz Parque, on November 30th – buy your ticket here . This will be the band's only performance in the country. The show will be accompanied by the bands Motionless In White , Spiritbox , and The Plot In You.