Live Review: Bring Me The Horizon play spectacular headline set at Birmingham’s Utilita Arena

Some bands you just know relish playing on the biggest stages, with the biggest production, looking out to the biggest crowds.

Bring Me The Horizon are firmly in that camp and at the Utilita Arena in Birmingham last night proved without a shadow of a doubt that 20 years into their career, they’re at the absolute top of their game.

Anyone at the Download Festival last summer will have known what the Sheffield natives had in store for the capacity crowd at the Utilita – and boy did they deliver.

From start to finish the band provided a sonic and visual onslaught on a multi levelled stage, covered with LED screens which during the evening, depicted everything from church interiors, demonic hellscapes and frosty landscapes.

This was coupled with flames shooting into and across the stage, clouds of CO2 blasted into the air and ticker tape blown up and across over fans.

Our ‘AI host’ for the night was Eve who provided instructions to the Birmingham crowd through its screens, at times mocking frontman Oli Sykes and also assisting with recording crowd samples for the band’s forthcoming seventh album POST HUMAN: NeX Gen (it’s still not finished – more on that later).

To rewind slightly, for their UK tour, Bring Me The Horizon put together one of the best supporting line ups you’re likely to see this year and were joined by Static Dress, Cassyette and Bad Omens who all put in great sets, despite the early stage times to facilitate a four band bill.

When Bring Me The Horizon did appear, it was following an introduction by Eve, all magnificently done in the style of the iconic video game franchise Metal Gear Solid, with the fonts, audio and game’s classic ‘codec’ interface all faithfully recreated. (The band’s 2019 track Ludens was for Metal Gear Solid creator Hideo Kojima’s Death Stranding).

In their two decades together, you’d be hard pushed to find a band whose sound has evolved in quite the way BMTH’s has, and every step of that progression was blended into their 20-song set which effortlessly shifted between metalcore, rock and pop.

The band opened with recent single DArkSide, a track showcasing their ability to meld melodic pop verses and huge rock choruses before heading into the heavier Empire (Let Them Sing) from 2013’s Sempiternal.

Dressed in a cropped red jacket, black vest and red trousers adorned with straps and metal loops, frontman Sykes couldn’t look more at home, bounding around the stage with band mates dotted around other parts of the enormous multi-level structure.

Going into this tour, there was some concern about how the band would cope with the sudden departure of keyboard and programmer Jordan Fish.

However, bolstered by a touring additional guitarist, BMTH couldn’t have sounded better.

Then, just as the band were finishing AmEN!, the gig was abruptly brought to a halt for around 15 minutes with frontman Sykes asking fans to move back after an injured fan was in need of medical attention.

After returning on stage with new single Kool-Aid, the band powered through singles including Shadow Moses and Kingslayer before dialling the pace down for sTraNgeRs with Sykes explaining it was their “cliché moment” where they perform the song acoustically, with fans instructed to get on the shoulders of others for the track.

Then, explaining “enough of all this new s***, shall we dial it back, wanna hear some golden oldies,” they launched into Diamonds Aren't Forever from 2008’s Suicide Season album.

In recent years, BMTH have collaborated with a range of other musicians and while the likes of Baby Metal, Glassjaw’s Daryl Palumbo and Lil Uzi Vert aren’t present for any of the tracks in Birmingham, visuals accompanied their vocals live.

Mid way through their set, Eve returned to check everyone inside was enjoying their ‘POST HUMAN: NeX Gen’ experience and to mock Sykes about the album’s delay.

After previewing snippets of what we assume are work in progress tracks which will feature alongside recent singles, Sykes explained the band still needed to record some ‘gang vocals’ for the record and the Birmingham crowd were led through chants of “Hello Oli you f****** k***head” and “Did you think you had us fooled,”.

Back to the gig, dancers in hazmat suits armed with CO2 guns joined the band for Parasite Eve while Antivist proved again, Sykes can still bring out the deathcore growls of their earlier records when needed.

Can You Feel My Heart brought an end to BMTH’s set before they returned for a three song encore ending with Throne, ahead of which Sykes told the 15,000 inside the gig had been the best night of the band’s tour so far.

Where Bring Me The Horizon go from here is anyone’s guess. Recent singles have hinted a return to a somewhat heavier sound but whatever they do, you’ve a feeling it’ll still ensure they’re three steps ahead of the competition.

As crazy as it sounds, you can really only see things getting bigger and better – and you certainly won’t find another gig this year where a ‘host AI’ makes a joke about the much maligned 1994 Sega Saturn gaming console!

*** You can see a gallery of photos from last night’s gig on Birmingham World here ***

Bring Me The Horizon played:

DArkSide

Empire (Let Them Sing)

MANTRA

Teardrops

AmEN!

Kool‐Aid

Shadow Moses

Obey

DiE4u

Itch For The Cure

Kingslayer

sTraNgeRs

Diamonds Aren't Forever

Parasite Eve

Antivist

Drown

Can You Feel My Heart

Encore:

Doomed

LosT

Throne