Bring Me The Horizon live in Manchester review: A brutal and brilliant celebration of their roots
In 2006 Bring Me The Horizon moved the needle with their ear splitting debut studio album. Twenty years on, their anniversary show at Manchester's BEC arena was one for the ages.
When Bring Me The Horizon announced plans to perform their debut album Count Your Blessings in full earlier this year, fans of the metal titans met it with such demand that a one-night affair very quickly expanded into a two-day event in Manchester.
Fast-forward to the reality of the weekender, and it’s a spectacle of nostalgic carnage underneath the blazing sun. A vintage advertisement of Count Your Blessings in 2007 graces the giant screens of the BEC to set the scene, before the Sheffield titans arrive with the obliterating opener, ‘Pray For Plagues.’
“We ain’t playing fucking nout until you push this shit back,” says frontman Oli Sykes. “Are you ready for this? 20 fucking years?” he adds.
In the audience, spirits are unsurprisingly feral for this special occasion, buoyed on by the lack of a barrier. Fans stage dive throughout, and one fan with an orthopaedic boot and a crutch in the air is the star of the show, often crowd surfing their way around. Others, meanwhile, look destined to follow in that fan’s footsteps as they throw themselves about with wild and often brutal abandon.
Throughout the show, every member of Bring Me The Horizon is on immaculate form. Lee Malia’s guitar adds a gnarly dimension to proceedings and drummer Matt Nicholls’ blast beats feel like a brutal reckoning.
A rare moment of bliss is felt during the melancholic, ‘Fifteen Fathoms, Counting.’ Perhaps the only section of the night where fans sat with their emotions, some burst into tears, hugging loved ones. Sykes is taken aback by the occasion later too as he dedicates ‘Off The Heazy’ to former guitarist Curtis Ward.
Even if this show is quite unlike anything that Bring Me The Horizon have done before, a customary chant of ‘Yorkshire’ from the crowd to salute the band’s Sheffield roots breaks out at one point, making it clear that underneath the circle pits and stage dives, this is a love-in of sorts too.
After airing new single ‘Dehumanized’ for the first time, they return for an encore where they air more songs from another era entirely , including ‘Suicide Season,’ ‘Reflections,’ and ‘Blessed with A Curse.’
“This might be the best gig ever. In the history of fucking gigs,” says an equally emotional, as bewildered Sykes, before jumping into the audience during ‘Diamonds Aren’t Forever.’ Their final encore of the night, while confetti fills the air.
There is a common misconception that hardcore and deathcore don’t belong at major concerts. But if there’s one thing Bring Me The Horizon proved this weekend, it’s that they owned every inch of that stage.
In the space of 48 hours, the band has single-handedly changed the game with the once turbulent memories they associated with Count Your Blessings. Every doubt they’ve had. Every pushback they’ve received is now redundant.
Count Your Blessings has never sounded better live, and their newest single is further evidence that this band still has deathcore blood pumping through their veins all these years later.