Depending on who you ask, everyone will point to a different defining era of Bring Me The Horizon. Since their inception, the Sheffield giants have embraced evolution with open arms, and that not only includes the way they’ve shifted into pop-metal transcendence but also how they’ve bent the vocals to suit each sound. With the band recently surprise-releasing their brand-new concept album, POST HUMAN: NeX GEn, and a stacked list of summer tour dates, we asked our readers to vote on the best Oli Sykes vocal performances of all time. Naturally, their answers were quite varied across all of the band’s different albums, and these are their top picks, ranked accordingly below.
Read more: 10 most criminally underrated Bring Me The Horizon songs
5. “Pray for Plagues”
Every song off Count Your Blessings has gnarly screams that sound like Sykes is just short of frying his voice, but “Pray For Plagues” hits differently. In fact, the song is among their heaviest openers ever, as the band were firmly in their deathcore phase. It features an absolutely guttural performance from Sykes that the band haven’t touched live in a couple of years, though the song has been performed hundreds of times before. “Pray for Plagues” epitomized a distinct era of BMTH — one that clearly still holds weight for our readers.
4. “Sleepwalking”
To say the least, Sempiternal remains a huge watershed moment for Bring Me The Horizon. The album was completely stacked, and one of its many highlights, “Sleepwalking,” proved that the band could mess with their formula, choosing to get more melodic and poppy without sacrificing their bite. Though the track is undoubtedly one of their more mellow, due in large part to Jordan Fish’s incredible electronic influence, Sykes’ vocals just completely shine.
3. “Drown”
You have to maintain an open mind whenever you listen to Bring Me The Horizon. The band have changed up their sound so many times, and on their major-label debut, That’s The Spirit, they unleashed their most polarizing LP yet. “Drown,” in particular, saw the band lean more toward alternative rock, delivering a ballad-y punch in the gut. It’s a song meant for stadiums — and one that totally delivers once you hear it live.
2. “Shadow Moses”
Besides boasting one of the most famous — and hilarious — misheard lyrics within the past decade, “Shadow Moses” heralded Bring Me The Horizon’s Sempiternal era in tremendous fashion. Within the landmark track, Sykes lays down some brutal screams that soar to the top of the list whenever people talk about his best, most emotive vocals ever. Here, he pushes his vocals into a jaw-dropping performance that speaks to Sempiternal’s power as a whole.
1. “Doomed”
Our readers overwhelmingly voted “Doomed” as Sykes’ greatest vocal performance of all time. In particular, they pointed out the Live at the Royal Albert Hall version, which sees an orchestra take the song to epic new heights. The beauty of Sykes’ voice is that it isn’t all about might. It’s also how he can get hugely melodic and anthemic, too. As he sings its soaring outro — “Who will fix me now?/Dive in when I’m down” — it’s hard not to admire his ability to provoke such big feelings.
