“Post Human: Next Gen is a real concept album, with a full narrative that connects to the first record” – Bring Me The Horizon share their point of view of the new release

Bring Me The Horizon released their highly anticipated new album “Post Human: Nex Gen” via Columbia Records. This is the latest chapter in the series to be revealed and sees the band expanding in a musical and conceptual way. It follows on from 2020’s “Post Human: Survival Horror”, which featured Yungblud, Nova Twins, BABYMETAL and Amy Lee (Evanescence), and included the huge hit singles “Teardrops” and “Obey“.

The group started this year with a bang. They played to over 140,000 fans in the U.K. and Ireland on their biggest U.K. arena tour to date, won the BRIT Award for “Best Alternative/Rock Act”, announced their first stadium show in São Paulo, Brazil (selling 30,000 tickets in the first day!) and now the surprise release of their new album, which caused a global frenzy since appearing online.

The first part of the “Post-Human” series, “Survival Horror”, recorded during the first COVID lockdowns almost entirely remotely, and leaned into the band’s heavy side to express its feelings of anger, fear, emptiness and despair. Of “Nex Gen”, Sykes says instead that it’s searching for something more hopeful, if not entirely positive in and of itself. As a matter of fact, the music has an even more euphonic, post-hardcore-inflected stripe, while still bursting with the band’s unique, forward-thinking creativity.

Oli adds the album took “ages to write”. Partly, this is down to the band thinking that lockdown would last much longer than it did. When it lifted, they quickly found their schedules full with touring the world and headlining festivals such as Reading and Leeds (where they were joined by Ed Sheeran for their collaborative hit “Bad Habits“), hosting and headlining “Nex Fest” in Japan, Download festival in the U.K., Good Things in Australia and When We Were Young and Sick New World in Las Vegas.

“Post-Human: Survival Horror” became far more of an event than the band had envisioned upon release, and crafting its follow-up required much bigger thinking than first anticipated. There is so much to unwrap under the surface of the album for those who can spot it.

It’s a real concept album, with a full narrative that connects to the first record, but the concept is hidden and buried. Some people aren’t going to be interested, but for some people it could be like a self-help book. There’s a lot of things in there, some of it’s quite clear, but a lot of it cryptic and hidden. People are gonna have to work it out.

Oli Sykes

In January, Bring Me The Horizon released a new track “Kool-Aid“. It was the first to arrive following the departure of longtime keyboardist and percussionist Jordan Fish the month before. Jordan had been a major influence on the band’s sound, inspiring many of the edgy guitar riffs and other elements on the “Sempiternal” album. His music production fingerprints can be found all over “That’s The Spirit”, which offered a stylistic departure from the metalcore genre.

This was the statement of the band:

Bring Me The Horizon has decided to part ways with Jordan Fish. We want to thank him for the musical journey he took with us and wish him luck with everything in the future. Meanwhile we continue to work on ‘Nex Gen’, with brand new music coming very soon.

Fish added in a separate statement:

I’m really grateful for my 11 years with the band, and extremely proud of all that we have achieved together. I look forward to hearing what they do next, and wish them every success in the future. I’m excited to start this next chapter in my career.