Sheffield superstars Bring Me The Horizon draw us into mundanity and trains of thought with their fresh new single “wonderful life”. Featuring Dani Filth (of Cradle Of Filth), the song is the fifth track of upcoming album amo which releases on 25th January via RCA / Sony Music Australia. Taking a curious side step from the cult-driven theatrics of previous single “MANTRA”, Bring Me The Horizon are revealing more of their album to come with the new track and video. Courtesy of hefty stadium-sized choruses, the unmistakeable voice of Oli Sykes, and booming riffs, it feels very much like a signature Bring Me The Horizon song.
Lyrically, “wonderful life” is a meandering tale of mortality, reading like a stream of thoughts about life, age, purpose, and a balance between ‘normie’ life and wildness. It’s unsurprising to hear from Oli that the lyrics were crafted exactly in this way; freestyle in the studio. With mental health still clearly a focus for Oli, he questions whether something he’s feeling is actually a feeling (numbness), wears false happiness as a mask, and describes how an attempt to metaphorically look on the bright side caused harm. For on-the-spot freestyling, the lyrics are great, and at times also add a layer of humour/sarcasm to the heavy contemplation of purpose.
What’s most interesting to me is the music video; containing the footage of the band members doing exceptionally normal things (going for a run, mowing grass, walking the dog, yawning on the couch, playing with your kid). This kind of content is fairly unusual to have in a music video, making it amusing how very boring/normal/uneventful it all is. In Oli’s words, these very mundane things are “quite nice” for musicians who spend a lot of time on the road. The most extreme instance (of this duality of lives they have) is witnessing Dani Filth in full stage facepaint and costume, sitting eating cereal or quietly choosing items while grocery shopping. It’s very impactfully and amusingly showing this dynamic of superstardom to normality.
“Domesticated. Still a little feral.
Don’t you know to chew with your mouth closed?”
Clearly one to observe his thoughts and feelings, Oli takes the concept of enjoying the mundane introspectively, and questions the boredom of it. This love and hate of mundane comes out most noticeably in the chorus were each line seems to swing in either direction, and even “what a wonderful life” could be easily interpreted as either suicidal sarcasm or the result of happy pyjama cuddles with the dog. There’s also a lust for wildness, despite the joy of the mundane, and the feature/collision of vocalists work well to show these ‘sides’ in action: fork-tongued metal savagery, and more normal melodic singing.
Sonically, the hugeness of guitars is so very YES and makes “wonderful life” easy to vibe with, even though it’s not as instantly impressive to me as “MANTRA” (which I’m still listening to regularly!). The final chorus with horns and expansiveness is a stand-out section, as well as the booming and bending guitar work, most noticeably after “I’ve forgotten what I’m on about”.
Check out “wonderful life”, and pre-order amo here: http://bmthorizon.co/amo
