Oli Sykes has spoken candidly in a new interview about how his past addictions fuelled the lyrics for Bring Me the Horizon’s latest track, ‘DiE4u’.
Speaking to NME, the 34-year-old discussed the band’s latest release which comes as the first follow-up to 2020’s POST HUMAN: SURVIVAL HORROR.
“I’m tackling the song as if this unhealthy obsession I have is a relationship – almost like a mistress,” said Sykes of the single.
“I’ve learned over the past year while I’ve been recovering that when you’re in it, addiction is like you’re having an affair.
“You’re doing this thing behind everyone’s back, it’s a secret and it feels like you’re cheating and betraying people. I never saw it in that way. I just thought I was harming myself and not other people. I didn’t realise how much it can fuck up people’s trust.
Sykes continued: “This song is triumphant for me in a way because it’s me finally accepting that I’m not someone who can drink alcohol, smoke weed or do any of these things because I just have a problem with it and it always goes down the same road.
“That’s not something that I’ve been able to admit to myself. This song is a defiant stamp of me saying, ‘No, I’m making a choice now. I can’t keep doing this for the rest of my life because it’s only going to end up one way’.”
Love Emo?
Get the latest Emo news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more
Sykes had famously publicly revealed his previous addiction to Ketamine back in 2014 while accepting an award for Best Album at the AP Awards.
“I wanna say something that I never thought I’d actually talk about,” he on stage.
“Before we wrote Sempiternal, I was a fucking drug addict. I was addicted to a drug called ketamine.”
He continued, “I was on it for years, and I was fucked off my head. My band wanted to kill me. My parents wanted to kill me. My fucking brother wanted to kill me. Everyone wanted to kill me.
“But they didn’t—they stood by me. They supported me through all that shit, and we wrote Sempiternal because of it.”
He continued, “No one fucking knows this, but I went to rehab for a month, and through that time, you guys had no fucking idea that I was in rehab. But you were sending me letters. You were sending me text messages. You were sending me fucking emails.
“When I got out of that rehab, I didn’t wanna fucking scream anymore; I wanted to sing it through the rooftops, and it’s all thanks to you. So thank you very much.”
Check out ‘DiE4u’ by Bring Me the Horizon:
