Bring Me The Horizon are a band with more experience than most of playing Reading and it’s not hard to imagine that at some point during their triumphant headline sets last month, frontman Oli Sykes’ mind was cast back to their very first appearance at the festival back in 2008. It’s fair to say the fresh-faced young metallers from Sheffield were up against it, spending their short set dodging all manner of missiles from the disgruntled crowd: kebab sauce, bags filled with woodchip, cameras, even phones. It was not a reaction that suggested Sykes and his bandmates would be coming back as headliners in the future.
But, as has been long proven, BMTH are made of stern stuff. Watching Sykes stalk the stage and command the crowd with his trademark mix of aggro and boisterous, expletive-laden charisma last weekend was to see a band and their singer revel in their natural environment. No-one would’ve believed it in 2008, but topping festival bills is where Bring Me The Horizon were always meant to be. It’s a transformation that was laid down in 2015 with the release of their fifth album That’s The Spirit.
