Bring Me the Horizon’s Oli Sykes on ‘NeX GEn’ and Jordan Fish’s Departure: ‘I’m Not Gonna Lie and Say It Ended Amicably’

variety.com:

Lexi Carson Over 20 years into their career, Bring Me the Horizon keep finding ways to reinvent themselves. On the day before the release of their latest album, “Post Human: NeX GEn,” a social media post by singer Oli Sykes showed him in a maid’s outfit with cat ears, holding a piece of paper that reads: “NEX GEN OUT MIDNIGHT” — fulfilling an inside joke with fans, as Sykes had said on social media if BMTH won their first BRIT Award for Best Alternative/Rock Act, which they did on March 2, then he would bring back the maid outfit he wore years ago.A post shared by Oli Sykes (@olobersykes) “NeX GEn” is the band’s seventh studio album and first project without Jordan Fish since 2013’s “Sempiternal.” It follows “Post Human: Survival Horror,” which was released during the pandemic and included some of the band’s heaviest songs in a decade. “It was a very snap decision that I made less than a month ago,” Sykes tells Variety about deciding to release “NeX GEn” as a surprise album.

He and the rest of the band — which also includes bassist Matt Kean and drummer Matt Nichols —started writing “NeX GEn” three years ago, and took longer than anticipated because they’d thought Covid lockdown would last longer than it did.

Once it lifted, he found himself busy once again, thrown into headlining festivals like Reading and Leeds. But, with the success of “Survival Horror” and older songs like “Can You Feel My Heart” going viral on TikTok, that prompted him to continue writing. “It felt like the demand for us was just insane,” Sykes says.