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Making peace: Sykes (centre) with bandmates (from left) Matt Nicholls, Jordan Fish, Matt Kean and Lee Malia.

Bring Me the Horizon frontman Oliver Sykes kicked addiction and found musical maturity

Life is looking up for Oli Sykes, frontman of British metalcore band Bring Me the Horizon. This summer, his band picked up album of the year at the Alternative Press Music Awards, Sykes is writing faster and with renewed passion, and he has discovered his singing voice. This positive upswing all began with the decision to check himself into rehab two years ago.

On receiving the band's first major award in July, Sykes came clean about his addiction to the party drug ketamine. He had hinted about his struggle with substances at the Reading Festival last year, but in his acceptance speech, he put it on the table.

"My band wanted to kill me, my parents wanted to kill me and my f***ing brother wanted to kill me. Everyone wanted to f***ing kill me," he told the crowd at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum in Cleveland, Ohio, before going on to thank his fans for the letters and texts that helped him.

Speaking from his home in Sheffield ahead of his upcoming Asian tour, which calls through Hong Kong on November 21, Sykes said his ketamine addiction "went on a long time, for years" and that although he wanted to give up, the pressures of touring complicated the situation. Rehab was a last resort, and that month he spent shut off from the world was a chance to truly be himself.

"The best part of it was not having to think about who I am, or what I do, or have to worry about anyone recognising me — it was good just to switch off," says the 28-year-old who lives with his girlfriend and is close to his family, seeing them most days.

Fresh out of rehab, Sykes went to ground with the band to the Lake District in England, to work on their next album. All up, it was a year out of action, but the end result was an album unlike anything they'd done before — and the hard work paid off.

debuted in Britain at number three on the album chart and number one on the rock chart. The band's heavy metal roots are clearly visible, but their sound has moved on — there are melodic and electronic elements, and a newfound depth.

None of this came by chance. It was the result of some serious crafting and some new skills. Sykes began working with a vocal coach and also researched the science of what makes a melody catchy.

"I had never learned about melodies before, so I put a bit of work into it. There's a lot of stuff out there that's quite interesting and not as tricky as it seems," says Sykes.

Experimenting is what now distinguishes the band. When Bring Me the Horizon formed in 2004 they may have been metalheads, but their tastes have changed over the past decade and so has their music. Today they are more rock than metal. "We can play the heavy metal festivals, but then we go to festivals with more rock bands and feel more at home there," says Sykes.

A key factor in the band's evolution has been the addition of keyboardist Jordan Fish. A friend of the band for some time, Sykes brought him onboard on a freelance basis to help with the digital side of , but he soon ended up taking on a bigger role.

Sykes credits Fish with helping him learn to sing — "I was hopeless before" — and bringing a new depth to the band.

"Jordan unlocked a lot of things for us. Soon he wasn't just doing digital. He was coming up with ideas for songs and writing different things. By the end of the album, we realised he was more present on every song than anyone had been before," says Sykes.

That determination to get things right meant they laboured over the first song on the album, . Although it was the first song they began writing, it was the last to be finished — "There was something special about it and it was going to be the first track on the album so we wanted to make sure that it was perfect and it took a long time."

Freed from the years of addiction, when he felt he could only give 50 per cent to everything he did, Sykes is making up for lost time.

During the 20 months since the release of , the band has been touring, but has managed to squeeze in some studio time to record a new song, . The track shows a newfound maturity.

"We all felt we had got better as band, and we wanted to put something out before we went quiet again and worked on our next album," says Sykes.

So is an indication of what the new album might bring? Of course not. Sykes is all for evolving, and can't predict what the new sound will be because he doesn't know what life will throw at them next. "As you get older your tastes change and you want to do different stuff. We never would have done two years ago. As you get better, you want to write better songs," he says.

What he does know for sure is that the next album won't take as long to write as the last because he's kicked ketamine. After the Asian tour — which will also take in Japan, Thailand and Taiwan — they will play London's Wembley Stadium in mid-December and then plan to lie low for six months and work on new material.

"This time I'll be in a much better frame, and the way we write now is a lot faster than we used to. I'm confident we can have a good album," says Sykes.

 

 

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Clean break
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