REVIEW: Bring Me The Horizon @ Tsongas Center, 2/1

By Jarrad Levy

Bring Me the Horizon has such a variety of music in their catalogue that is all masterful and passionate in its own way. Whether it be hardcore, metal, rock, or pop – it is all done with a vigor and passion usually unseen in a band that does performs only one of those genres. This presence was not lost in the band’s on-stage performance.

The moment lead singer Oliver Sykes hit the stage for the moody and atmospheric “i apologize if you feel something,” he owned the stage. His stage presence is difficult to describe, but it was almost like a muted swagger. He knew he had the attention of every fan in the arena, but he did not act overconfident or flashy. Instead, he simply walked to the edge of the stage, reaching out to the crowd: begging them to feel his heart.

The moment the opening song ended, the rest of Bring Me the Horizon rushed on stage and jammed into the dramatic and rocking “MANTRA.” The song brought the crowd to life after a disappointingly generic performance by opening band, Thrice.

Once “MANTRA” ended, Sykes explained that the band would not be complete for the show, as backing vocalist and keyboardist, Jordan Fish, had to return to the United Kingdom due to family issues. He promised that the band would play extra hard to compensate – and boy, did they deliver. Sykes is notoriously very hit-or-miss on stage, sometimes landing his notes and performing his blood curdling and spine tingling screams and sometimes not. It would not be out of the realm of believability to say that the lack of Fish motivated Sykes to put on an awesome show despite the band being a man down. Additionally, as a result of the loss of Fish, Sykes had the crowd sing many of his parts throughout the night. This added to the crowd interaction, and made the night more entertaining as a whole, as the audience was more connected to the band than at most concerts.

As the concert continued, the band played many of their greatest hits, but excluded many of their early hardcore tracks in favor of songs from their 2013 record, Sempiternal, and later. While many fans are upset due to the band seeming to have forgotten about their roots, I welcome their evolution and trek into more rock and pop music, as fully screaming songs are not my cup of tea. Despite the lack of older songs, there was also a lack of newer songs. A week before this show, Bring Me the Horizon released their sixth studio album, amo. (Check out Jarrad’s review here.) The album is a fantastic mish-mosh of musical styles, and yet the only songs from it that were played were some of the previously released singles: “MANTRA,” “wonderful life,””medicine,” and “nighlist blues.” Many of the best songs on the record were completely ignored.

After an extremely energetic and powerful performance of the anarchist “Antivist,” the band played an acoustic version of their song, “Drown.” It originally seemed like it would be weird to place an acoustic ballad towards the center of their set, but after the song, the band walked off stage. That was it for the main performance: 50 minutes. At this point it seemed sure that they would play a long encore — a strange choice, but not one I was against. The encore was two songs long. The concert clocked in at just over an hour. Despite the fact that Sykes and company put on what should have been one of the best concerts I have seen in a long time, they severely dampened it by playing what felt like half a show. Bring Me the Horizon has so many strong and fantastic songs in their arsenal and instead of going to war  complete with all the big guns, they fought a skirmish.

Not to sound wholly negative, the hour that the band played was magical. It was energetic and simply fun. Being able to scream along with such emotion is a release unlike any other. And frankly, I would still recommend seeing Bring Me the Horizon live – just know what you’re getting into when you do.