Bring Me the Horizon to Explore Love + Divorce on ‘Amo’ Album, Reveal ‘Mantra’ Video
While recently speaking about the inspiration for Bring Me the Horizon's Amo album, frontman Oli Sykes told BBC Radio 1, "Amo is a love album that explores every aspect of that most powerful emotion. It deals with the good the bad and the ugly, and as a result we’ve created an album that’s more experimental, more varied, weird and wonderful than anything we’ve done before." While Amo is Portuguese for "love," Sykes was definitely serious about exploring all aspects, as he revealed in a new interview with NME that the album took him to a place that was previously off limits for inspiration -- his divorce.
The singer stated, “I went through a divorce a couple of years ago and I really didn’t want to talk about. I don’t want it to seem like I care, and I didn’t want to dredge up the past. I didn’t want to give the person the ‘glory’ of writing stuff about them and shit like that. After it while it just became apparent that I needed to. I needed to get it out of my system."
He continued, "It wasn’t the fact that I was miserable, I was fine. At the same time when you go through something traumatic, you carry a lot of stuff with you after it. There’s a lot of mental baggage. Whatever happened in that situation, I took that on. Maybe I started trusting people less, and it’s completely irrational – but you do. I’ve always said it, but writing music and lyrics is the most therapeutic thing. I’m really lucky in that sense, because it’s the best way to get stuff out, you know? To write about it and sing it onstage.”
Sykes is quick to caution that while the breakdown of his past relationship did provide some inspiration, the album as a whole is not centered entirely on that. "There’s good stuff, there’s bad stuff, there’s weird stuff. It’s kind of more like a think-piece on love and how it can effect you. Not just you, but other people. You go into a relationship and people pick sides. There’s a pack mentality. It’s quite an easy way to write a concept album about love. Everything boils down to love in the end," he concludes. See more of the chat below.
In other Bring Me the Horizon news, after debuting their new song "Mantra" last week, a chaotic new video for the song has been revealed. You can watch the clip above. The band's Amo album is due Jan. 11, 2019 and can be pre-ordered here. Look for Bring Me the Horizon starting their touring support for the disc in Europe this November, with a North American trek to follow in early 2019.
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