Written by Tyler Johnson

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Bring Me The Horizon take fans by surprise with the release of their heavily electronic-driven, surprise EP Music to listen to~dance to~blaze to~pray to~feed to~sleep to~talk to~grind to~trip to~breathe to~help to~hurt to~scroll to~roll to~love to~hate to~learn to~plot to~play to~be to~feel to~breed to~sweat to~dream to~hide to~live to~die to~GO TO (herein shortened ~GO TO~) through Sony Music.

While released as an EP, ~GO TO~ is composed of eight songs totaling a whopping 1 hour and 15 minutes in length and incorporates several notable features including Halsey, Bexey, Lotus Eater, Yonaka, and more. 

Bring Me the Horizon have had an extremely successful year, with the release of their sixth studio album Amo and subsequent world tours in support of it, involvement on the Death Stranding: Timefall soundtrack with their single “Ludens”, and now a surprise EP to cap off 2019. 

~GO TO~ is an experimental, electronic-driven exploration of sound that is sure to challenge listeners. Opening the EP is “Steal Something.” and “Candy Truck / You Expected: LAB Your Result: Green”, two tracks focused on ambient electronics with minimal lyrical involvement. Instrumentally, the former of the two tracks is very reminiscent of the opening song on Amo “i apologize if you feel something” and the latter invokes a great deal of emotional turmoil in the soft piano outro.

Shifting gears, Bring Me The Horizon put forth an orchestral masterpiece in “A Devastating Liberation” featuring Parallax Orchestra, who were involved in Bring Me the Horizon’s live performance Live at the Royal Albert Hall. This band is well known for exploring orchestral elements in their previous works as well, particularly throughout their 2010 album There Is a Hell Believe Me I’ve Seen It. There Is a Heaven Let’s Keep It A Secret. The song itself incorporates the orchestral moments from “why you gotta kick me when I’m down?”, another from Amo, and expands them into a sonically grand piece of music familiar to something one would find at the climax of their favorite sci-fi thriller. 

Continuing to rework previous efforts, “¿” features pop star Halsey delivering lines from Amo’s “in the dark” in a very similar style as the original, leading me to believe this was a direct remix into a full dance-inspired effort. One of the best elements of this album is showcased beautifully at the end of this song in the seamless transition into the following song, lending a great deal of cohesion to this project. 

“Underground Big ” is one of the most interesting tracks on this EP, lasting an impressive 24 minutes and 6 seconds. This track is essentially split into three sections, each with their own unique sound style; the first is composed of a hip-hop/trap beat featuring vocals from UK rapper Bexey, the second is a sharp transition into a riff-heavy section featuring UK metal band Lotus Eater, which ends quickly and transitions into the third and final section composed of a single, glitchy sample that doesn’t change the structure or tone for the entire 19 minutes that is the rest of this song. Oli Sykes comes in and out intermittently throughout this section to lend a certain hypnotic trance to this song in the delivery of his lines.

Bring Me the Horizon bring back the ambient dance elements found earlier in the EP in “like seeing spiders running riot on your lover’s grave” and “Dead Dolphin Sounds ‘aid brain growth in unborn child’ Virtual Therapy / Nature Healing 2 Hours”, which feature Happyalone and Toriel, respectively.

~GO TO~ ends with “±ªþ³§”, which features another up-and-coming British rock band, Yonaka. The back and forth between Oli and Yonaka vocalist Theresa Jarvis make it the most similar in sound to material found on Amo. While it sounds like it could carry on for another 5 minutes, the song ends abruptly, perhaps signifying Bring Me The Horizon still have plenty they want to show us but are refraining from doing so.

In a recent interview with NME, Oli Sykes mentioned the band would like to move away from the traditional album cycle and towards more frequent releases of smaller projects. He was then asked if this would have implications on future experimentation. “I like how our records go from super poppy to heavy then electronic, and next I’d like to make a bunch of records where each of them has a distinct vibe to it,” he said. “There’s always a degree of compromise, but I’d love to write songs that are just the most obscure, electro-y.”. 

The EP is available now.

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