Bring Me The Horizon Australia: Adelaide Nex Gen World tour review
British rock star Oli Sykes lived in Adelaide as a child – and on Wednesday he returned to SA for a scorching arena show with his band Bring Me The Horizon. Full review.
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Rock’s new cult figure returned to where it all started on Wednesday night – Adelaide.
Oli Sykes and his genre-busting arena-filling juggernaut Bring Me The Horizon blew away a near-sold-out Entertainment Centre in a homecoming of epic proportions.
The uber popular Brit moved to Australia with his parents and lived in Adelaide – and Perth – for six years until returning to the UK when he was eight.
The rest, they say, is history – albeit with a few chapters.
On a cool April night, what was obvious is that there might be no hotter band in the world right now.
And no hotter frontman than Sykes, who commands his legion of fans on – and off – the stage like no other.
“Get the f--k up,” Sykes screamed at the adoring crowd, as the Sheffield rockers burst onto the stage with DarkSide in their first South Australian appearance since 2017.
And they duly obliged for the rest of the night.
The adoration of Sykes and his ability to connect with those who almost worship him comes to the fore in 2015 hit Drown almost two hours later.
He ventured down to the front row with a camera, looking the fans in the eye and singing every word with them – all while filming, so everyone else in the arena could see.
“Oli, please come and give me a hug,” one sign said.
He did.
He kissed another on the forehead as she wept. “It’s not that bad,” Sykes remarked.
But he knows that’s not the reason for the tears.
“Music has saved my life and it’s been a light bulb moment for me to realise we are a band that does that for people,” the 37-year-old said on the band’s last visit Down Under.
As the video package proves during the encore, ‘you saved my life banners’ are commonplace at Bring Me The Horizon shows.
When Sykes sings, ‘who will fix me now, dive in when I’m down’, the answer for many singing at the top of their lungs is obvious – it’s him.
What was never obvious, though, is just how this full circle would complete.
“I used to live in Adelaide,” the charismatic Sykes remarked to huge applause late in the blistering set.
“I’m one of you… I’ve got a passport, I’m an Aussie.
“It’s very nice to come back to Adelaide as an adult and play for god knows how many people.
“Never in a million years did we think we’d be playing for so many people in Australia.”
Starting out as a deathcore band that exploded in the MySpace era of the early 2000s, not many did.
“We didn’t think we’d even be around 20 months after our first show,” drummer Matt Nicholls – brutal as ever alongside bassist Matt Kean – admitted on radio this week.
But there they were almost 20 years to the day later, the Sheffield rockers – missing guitarist Lee Malia, who is back home after the birth of a child – delivering an mesmerising performance on the fourth stop of a seven-leg Australian tour.
Not only mesmerising in terms of how Sykes, who has more than three million followers on Instagram, draws you in, but how easily you get lost in the production spectacle.
In a good way.
Pyrotechnics, lasers, a gothic-church backdrop, dystopian imagery – all in the band’s form of a video game.
It’s all part of the narrative and thought process behind the upcoming, and long-awaited, release, Post Human: NeX GEn – the second instalment of the Post Human series that began with 2020’s Survival Horror.
Songs from this phase of the band’s career, where pop and electronic sounds are prominent, dominate the first half of the set.
The latest track from the forthcoming album, Kool-Aid, proves Sykes really does have the crowd in the palm of his hand – or, in this case, on the tip of his finger.
As the sirens ring out and the intro builds, Sykes twirls his finger. In an instant in the middle of the floor, a circle opens up and controlled chaos ensures.
The clear shift towards a more mainstream-friendly sound can be traced back to career-defining albums Sempiternal (2013) and That’s The Spirit (2015).
And they, again, provided the highlights of the show – one which began with captivating performances from the ‘star of future emo’, Melbourne’s Daine, Perth’s Make Them Suffer and the phenomenon that is Sleep Token.
Shadow Moses had the crowd in a frenzy on the floor and singing as one in the seats, all inside the brutal hit’s four-minute run time.
“Woah,” Sykes exclaims in response to the energy in the room.
“You guys are f--king on one tonight… we missed you, we missed you a lot.”
Sykes hand-picked a lucky member of the crowd to sing – or, more aptly, scream – fellow Sempiternal number, Antivist, alongside him. Up jumped ‘Dylan’, who hugged and fist-pumped Sykes during his moment on stage.
Early Bring Me The Horizon fans were happy with the inclusion of Diamonds Aren’t Forever from 2008’s suicide season.
Sykes’ guttural screams hitting you right in the face, almost as if to ensure the breather he gave the crowd with the spine-tingling acoustic version of Strangers was brief.
The contrast was a jolt to the senses – again, in a good way.
The band’s move towards the mainstream was accelerated by a collaboration with pop superstar Ed Sheeran and Sempiternal hit Can You Feel My Heart? going viral on TikTok during Covid lockdown, eight years after its release.
The latter introducing the band to a whole new group of fans, who added to a diverse mix in a sea of black T-shirts on Wednesday.
“Hello everyone, old and new,” a sincere Sykes said after asking who had seen them before.
Not only has the band meant a lot to so many for a long time, it feels new to a whole new group of people today.
Sykes was asked for his thoughts on why in a recent interview with Rolling Stone.
“Extreme emotion disappeared for 10 years and kids are rediscovering that level of it,” he said.
“That’s why I think we’ve got a chance, because we’re highly emotive, that’s our bread and butter.”
As everyone saw on Wednesday night, they’ve got more than a chance.
Bring Me The Horizon heads back to Melbourne for a second show at Rod Laver Arena on Thursday, before two sold out nights in Brisbane.
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Originally published as Bring Me The Horizon Australia: Adelaide Nex Gen World tour review
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