BRING ME THE HORIZON’s LEE MALIA On The Band’s Explorative Sound: “We Did It From The Start Though, We Weren’t Scared To Switch Up”

Guitar recently had a chat with Bring Me The Horizon‘s Lee Malia about the band’s success over the last year. And how that with success comes scrutiny and dissection, and that BMTH are no strangers to it.

For years, a constant point of criticism for the band was that they strayed away from their metal roots, and they went too far out of the bounds of what was considered to be the genre.

But, the Bring Me The Horizon guitarist argues that the band has always pushed the boundaries, and always explored, and that people should come to expect that of them: “I think we’ve always worked that way. You could always hear it, it’s just everyone trying to get their influences in and make it cohesive. Because we did it from the start though, we weren’t scared to switch up. So, now we can kind of just come out with whatever. And people are just like, ‘of course they’ve done some weird shit!”

And Malia elaborated that he understands why people get the impression that the band isn’t metal enough, or why some may think that BMTH straight up hates metal: “No one hates metal in the band! They all still like it. Me and Mat [Nicholls] are still going to watch Metallica. Everyone still appreciates metal, it’s just that they also have different interests.”

Because Malia understands evolution is natural – he was the one to introduce vocalist Oli Sykes and drummer Mat Nicholls to Swedish death metal – and in reflection of their interests, Bring Me The Horizon‘s first release, Count Your Blessings, was a “mishmash” of that sound alongside their hardcore and metal influences.

Simply put, BMTH is no stranger to evolution, so people really should stop acting surprised when the band evolves.