Why Oli Sykes Stopped Screaming

Sounding sort of reserved at first, it's clear when Sykes starts talking about his work, there's no stopping him. The passion in his voice is indubitable, and he regularly litters his prose with "you know what I mean?" as he retracts words and corrects himself to better expand on his insights on the band's philosophy. With the album out on 11 September, it's almost go time.

"I guess there are just so many things that keep you up every day... you're scared about it leaking, obviously. A leak is imminent, so every day you wake up and that's the first thing I do: 'Has it leaked yet?' Also, there's no pressure... but from the label's point of view, it's one of their biggest priorities of the year so they're really hoping to top the charts or at least get really high. Again, every day is like, 'How has it been in the charts? How is it selling?'

"This record could tank, it could bomb, but we'll never go back to what we used to do."

"It's exciting but it's very draining every day as well. I've never been on the internet so much in my life. I'm not someone who really uses Twitter or Instagram that much, and my girlfriend" — he corrects himself here with a chuckle: she is now his wife, the pair having gotten hitched just six weeks ago — "she's always like, 'You're glued to your phone!' It's just not normal for me."

Arguably the most nerve-racking thing for Sykes and the rest of the band is the reaction they'll receive to That's The Spirit. With the record's production undertaken by Sykes and keys/vocalist Jordan Fish themselves, the 11-track album is much more alt-rock and pop rock focused than ever before — not that Sykes is resentful of this fact at all.

"The stuff they've heard so far is arguably the heaviest on the record... we put out Happy Song and we thought people were going to be like, 'Oh yeah! It's heavy!' but some people are like, 'This is like, radio rock,' and we're thinking, 'Oh my god, what are you gonna think when you hear the rest of the CD?'

"I fully believe this is the best record we've wrote by miles; every single song on the record is perfect, in my opinion. We worked on it so hard, there's not one bit we'd change about it. And yeah, it's a lot softer but it's got so much more to offer than any record we've done before.

"It's more melodic because that's what felt natural, we're not doing it for any other reason other than that's what came out. We tried to write some heavier stuff for it and it just sounded so forced, it didn't fit in whatsoever. At the end of the day, we couldn't have wrote anything else other than this record if we wanted it to be genuine, you know what I mean? This record could tank, it could bomb, but we'll never go back to what we used to do. No matter how it gets received, we'll push on," Sykes concedes.

One of Sykes' most distinguishable talents — his raucous throat vocals — is all but gone on their newest record. When Sykes accepted the band's Album Of The Year award for Sempiternal at the Alternative Press Music Awards in 2014 for the first time, Sykes came clean about his drug addiction to ketamine. He tells the crowd that once he'd left rehab, he "didn't want to scream anymore, he wanted to sing from the fucking rooftops". The curious part is, he seems to have meant it quite literally. Ever since he left rehab, Sykes seems to have so much more to say and so many more ways to say it.

"Before Sempiternal, when I was writing with Jordan and stuff, I said to him, 'I kind of want to sing because I've taken screaming as far as I can and there's only so much you can convey with it.' Only a single note, and a single voice, you know? I wanted to more freely illustrate points and emotions and really all you can get across with screaming is anger — anger and desperation. You can't get across sarcasm, you can't get across vulnerability, you can't get across even boredom! All that stuff for this album, it was so important that we could.

"We wanted Happy Song to be ironic, it's got lyrics that are dumb, because it's about a dumb thing. It's like a stupid answer to a stupid question in the way it's like, 'I'm depressed but I'm going to fucking fill my thoughts with superficial and trivial stuff just to stop thinking about it'. It really needed to get across that point. I think if I was just screaming lyrics like 'I've had enough/There's a voice in my head/Says I'm better off dead', it'd just be a crap lyric, so it's important that it comes off very monotonous and then bursts into this screaming.

"The first track, Doomed — I think it's very interesting because a lot of people will be expecting a really heavy opener with a title like that, but the title is actually sung in a falsetto. It's that contrast to get this point across. Me screaming 'I think we're doomed', yeah it might sound cool but it's not bringing anything new to the table, it's not giving you any new emotions. When you're saying something that hopeless, in the nicest Disney-like voice you can sing it, it really gets across what depression is to me and when you allow yourself to feel antibodies and happiness rush up and combat that sadness. It's this weird euphoric feeling — it was just so important to get across those deeper emotions rather than just anger and desperation."

"All you can get across with screaming is anger - anger and desperation."

Despite their major label backing, the band was eager to cover new ground in the making of That's The Spirit. Forgoing a big-shot producer, the band wrote at home and alleviated the stresses of tracking the album in the most stress-free place they could imagine — Santorini, Greece. Recording at their own pace, song by song, rather than instrument by instrument as is the norm, the band found it a surefire way to protect their vision from external influences.

"No disrespect to anyone we've worked with before, because we could've been given the biggest name, the biggest producer in the world, and we would've still been unhappy. You find out quickly when you have your own vision... bringing other people into it just waters down that vision and taints it.

"Sometimes, from my point of view, their opinion is just there because they feel like they need one. Because how are they making their paycheck if they don't? It just ends up becoming a compromise of the music, you know what I mean?"

Make no mistake — Bring Me The Horizon are not having a whine. Admirably, they're entirely confident in their vision and their ability to reach it on their own, at all costs.

"We've produced the fuck out of these songs, we've worked on this album for six months in total with the recordings and everything. We don't need someone to come in and go, 'Why don't you change that? Why don't you change that?' We know how we want the vocals to sound, we know how we want the drums to sound, we know how the guitars should sound, so why bother spending hundreds of thousands on someone?"

No point, we guess, as long as their fans are digging it — and from what the fans have heard from tracks Happy Song, Throne and True Friends, digging it they are.