The first circle pits open to the sombre, operatic intro music, before Bring Me the Horizon are even on stage, and they barely slam shut again for the duration. Chief gargler Oli Sykes demands “at least four” before he’ll even start The House of Wolves. And that’s before he causes stage-front security meltdown by inviting 10,000 fans to crowd-surf over the barriers, “so I can see your beautiful faces”, and instigates numerous walls of death – for which the crowd part down the centre of the arena, then charge at each other like a cross between the Battle of Culloden and Total Wipeout – with off-colour cries such as, “Fuck someone in the eye!” For the entire show the Wembley floor is a churning maelstrom of flailing bodies, a multitude of mosh.
It feels like a new rock tribe is on the rise, and their excitement is understandable. Sheffield’s Bring Me the Horizon, playing their biggest ever gig tonight, represent a real rejuvenation in British metal, one of the few homegrown bands since the classic 80s wave to crack the arenas by tempering their early death-core torrents with Linkin Park-ish pop-metal choruses and industrial and gothic elements, without losing a sliver of their ferocity.
It makes for a show that lurches between cliched vomit-vocal thrashcore resembling a Scud bombardment on a Stalingrad slaughterhouse and moments of true hardcore sophistication, all set to visuals of voodoo ceremonies, medieval battle recreations, warfare, reptiles, and religious iconography (Diamonds Aren’t Forever, Alligator Blood). Antivist is a nihilistic, anti-authoritarian anthem with lyrics that could’ve been culled from an extremely sweary edition of Russell Brand’s The Trews, and Sleepwalking, the stirring pop-crossover highlight of more accessible 2013 album, Sempiturnal, sounds like chart-friendly melodic rock monstrously mutated. The appearance of former guitarist Curtis Ward for bubonic early rarity Pray for Plagues – “a song we really don’t wanna play,” Sykes chides – adds to the dazzle, but tonight the tempestuous eddies of Wembley’s thrashing cauldron provide their own spectacle.
