Conquering all: What happened when Bring Me The Horizon took NeX GEn to Louder Than Life

“That,” spits Oli Sykes, “is fookin’ shite.”

You’ve almost definitely heard the Bring Me The Horizon singer goad audiences like this before, going for bigger pits. But in America, as the opening kick of their biggest U.S. tour to date, starting with their first-ever festival headline show here, there’s a hunger. It matters not that all of three people in Kentucky know what a Sheffield is, or that Oli’s almost certainly the first person south of America’s Mason-Dixon Line to use the word “Knob-’ed”, at this point BMTH are Britain’s greatest metal export not called Iron Maiden or fellow Yorkshiremen Def Leppard. Brit or European, you’ve probably seen this show already this summer. But not like this. Not like this.

Following the computerised E.V.E.’s by now standard disembodied warnings that the pits are “weak as fuck”, the band arrive and kick into DArkSide. From the very start, it’s a sensory overload of music, lights, incredible videos and a magic touch that leaves you incapable of turning away. Just like at Reading & Leeds and Germany’s Rock im Park and Rock am Ring, the massive screens that make up their set, starting as a cathedral, is dominating. The usual fallen angel threatens to shake the stage apart as she bangs her mighty fists on it during a rapturous Kool-Aid, while throughout BMTH are rendered in cod-futuristic, Matrix colours, or else illustrated as wolves.

“Fuckin’ hell, there’s a lot of you, in’t there?” exclaims Oli, surveying the crowd. If you want a scale on this thing, it’s bigger than Deftones or Slayer in the same slot. In fact, even before they arrived, as Evanescence performed to a phenomenal crowd, the side of the arena housing their stage was already full. Horizon were good anyway, but add scale like that to the equation and the reaction is a guaranteed slam dunk.

Even if you’ve seen this show before over the past 18 months, it simply does not get old. As has been mentioned so many times, maybe that’s because of the band’s still keen Yorkshire charm. Or maybe, frankly, that they’re better than literally anyone else here. Whatever it is, it’s absolute dynamite.

A lucky fan is brought onstage to sing their way through the prickly Antivist, as Oli lounges on the onstage steps. At another point, he demands – and gets – a frankly silly-sized pit. Among the wild amounts of fire, massive staging and eye-melting screens, it’s his foul-mouthed charm that (still) gives them so much of their presence and character, keeps them real. With a show of this size, sometimes it’s easy for bands to get lost among it all and lose some of their energy and seem, ironically, quite boring. Not a problem here.

It’s still impressive just how hulking a setlist they have, too. Can You Feel My Heart has become enormous now, while the ‘This is Sempiternal’ shout during Shadow Moses is one of the most classic live bits of any show in rock. Kingslayer is bonkers, like being sucked into a video game, while Mantra and Happy Song are sing-alongs par excellence. Talking of which, here’s their cover of Wonderwall, and for an extra bit of singing power, they bring out Underoath’s Spencer Chamberlain for the live debut of a bulleT w/ my namE On.

“We’ve come all the way from England for this shit,” winks Oli at one point. He’s rewarded with a spectacular wall of death. It’s a trip well made. As ever, you’re left exhilarated and completely elated. Once again, BMTH are one of the best things you’ll ever see.

Read this next:

• 11 lesser known Bring Me The Horizon songs that everyone needs to hear
• Oli Sykes: “I still feel like the underdog… But it’s important to stop smell the roses, and to be like, ‘This is fucking amazing, what we’ve achieved’”
• Who are Bring Me The Horizon’s fans?