Sheffield headbangers Bring Me the Horizon have come a long way from their metal/deathcore roots, with their latest album cementing their transformation into a chart-topping mainstream rock band.

Just before ‘That's The Spirit’ was released (to widespread acclaim), GoldenPlec had a chat with Bring Me the Horizon’s drummer Matt Nicholls about the writing process for the album, touring and breaking away from the shackles of genres.

Before the album was released, Nicholls felt nothing but excitement, was “100% confident”  and “content” that he and his band mates had produced the album they wanted to.  And rightly so, as ‘That's The Spirit’ (released 11 September) entered the UK and US charts at number 2. It’s currently number 4 in the Irish charts.

This mainstream success hasn’t come free of criticism, particularly online, but this isn’t something Nicholls pays much heed to. “I don’t use twitter, I don’t use social media – I have an Instagram account but that’s it. I don’t go searching. Stuff like that would probably irritate me to be honest, it would probably make me feel like shit. People can be ruthless on the internet, people can be dickheads – but there’s also people being positive.”

With their fifth album to date, Bring Me the Horizon have reached a point where they’ve found a system that works for them when it comes to recording. After trying different ways first, they figured out a way that suits them best.

Their 2013 album ‘Sempiternal’ saw the band decamp to vocalist and keyboardist Oliver Sykes’ house in search of a nicer, less draining environment than a typical band practice room. “We did the same again on this record. We all wrote in Oli’s house, where he has a little studio room with a vocal booth. It’s just a really relaxed way to do it. It might not be the best for every band. I can’t really speak for everyone else but for us it works.” 

Doing it authentically and completely on their own meant that they didn’t have any outside opinions to contradict their own, it also meant that they saved money and got to use it elsewhere. “We didn’t use a big producer, we did it ourselves.” Production came from keyboadist Jordan Fish, who “has a history of recording and producing bands. He has a studio in Reading and I guess we experimented on Drown. We did that single ourselves and it was just so relaxed and we were like we need to do the album ourselves, you know?"

“When you work with a  big name producer I think sometimes they put in their two cents because they have to, and I think sometimes people can make it really stressful when it doesn’t need to be. [Some producers can say] ‘change this, do that, this is how this should sound’ and a lot of bands would [probably just believe them] even though they know in their head what they want to sound like. But we’ve never worked like that. We know how we want our songs to sound and we won’t compromise on that.

Ultimately the recording sessions for ‘That's The Spirit’ in Santorini, Greece “because we weren’t spending any money on a big name producer we just thought ‘let’s just go to a crazy studio’. So we literally just Googled ‘best studios in the world’ and the first one that came up was in Santorini in Greece so we just said ‘let’s just go there’.”

Recording in this way is hard work, admits Nicholls, but it pays off. “When it’s done you can sit back and go ‘yeah it was hard but fucking hell it’s good’.”

Bring Me the Horizon have changed their sound a lot since 2006’s ‘Count Your Blessings’, Anything that could possibly be described as deathcore in favour of a sound with more mass appeal. Discussing these developments, Nicholls explains that “we started the band when we were 16/17 we recorded our first album when we were 18. I’m 29 now, been doing this for a long time and a lot changes in 11 years, your taste changes, everything.”

As a band, Bring Me the Horizon is all about “moving on and progressing and bettering ourselves, and bettering our song writing and the musical capabilities, everything like that. We just want to progress, we’re not one of these bands that is just happy with getting our core fan base and being like ‘we’ve got them now, let’s just keep writing the same stuff so we don’t lose them’. We’re not about that. We want to take our band to the next level. Meaning we want to appeal to all kinds of music fans, not just heavy music fans – we want to appeal to everyone. We just want to progress, that’s all. We’re not bothered about staying in the same place and getting bored.”

Some of this change is down to the fact that the band all listen to every time of music, and Nicholls believes that being open-minded about music is important. “People shoot themselves in the foot when they limit themselves to the same genre. Every style of music is set to be enjoyed by everyone from every walk of life. As long as a song does something exciting, makes you feel something – whether that be something good or something bad or whatever –you’re connecting with it. Never limit yourself to just one certain genre, enjoy everything and that’s it.”

Even though they have changed, Bring Me the Horizon have brought a lot of their fans with them. These fans are, after all, incredibly dedicated and show this dedication in a multitude of ways, including plenty of body art. “Stuff like that is crazy,” says Nicholls. “I remember the first time someone showed us they had a tattoo and we were just like ‘what the fuck, this is insane!’ Now I’ve seen people with portraits of Oli and lyrics and stuff. That’s cool though, people connect to our band and get what we do… and that to us is an achievement..”

The band decided to put Avalanche out on Apple music before the release, because, as Nicholls is quick to explain “Apple is massive. And it’s cool, people like Elton John have their own shows and stuff and Zane Lowe is on there – obviously he’s a big influence and he’s been a really cool guy with us since day one, he supports us and I think it’s just a good thing, a great thing.”

With ‘That's The Spirit’ released, Bring Me the Horizon are rearing to get out on tour once more, and that’s the plan for the foreseeable future. “I like every gig,” says Nicholls. “I like playing in front of a lot of fans, I like playing in front of people who have never heard us before. When you’re playing festivals it’s easy to see who has never heard of you before, and they might be surprised and stoked on it… That’s why we started the band, we used to go to shows and watch people mosh and go crazy and say ‘I want to do that, I want to be in a band, I want people to mosh at our shows.’ Live music will always be why we’re here.”

‘That's The Spirit’ is on sale now.