Friday, May 31st, the All Points East festival in London, England, hosted a stellar and eclectic lineup of some of the best heavy-music artists in the world, ranging from neck-snapping metalcore (Architects, Employed to Serve) to gut-punching hip-hip (Run the Jewels, Scarlxrd). Eclectic in their own right, Bring Me the Horizon — whose long-running career spans deathcore, hard rock and pop — headlined the event, and the band’s show-closing set saw Oli Sykes and Co. joined onstage by Cradle of Filth frontman Dani Filth for the collaborative song “Wonderful Life” off BMTH’s latest LP, Amo, and Architects lead vocalist Sam Carter for “The Sadness Will Never End,” a cut off 2008’s Suicide Season on which he guested. See fan-shot footage below.
The performance was also notable for Sykes’ emotional retraction of controversial statements he made about the state of rock music earlier this year. In a January interview with NME, the BMTH frontman expressed disillusionment with the scene his band came up in and is most identified with. “That’s why we really just feel such a disconnect with the rock scene, because there hasn’t been an icon in the rock scene for 30 years,” Sykes said. “Do you know what I mean? Who was the last great icon? It’s all Metallica and Black Sabbath. The bands that are headlining are all bands that came out 20 years ago. Rock hasn’t produced a legend in decades, and every other genre has.”
“[The scene] doesn’t like it when a band gets big,” he added. “It’s like something is being stolen from them. There came a time for our band where we just couldn’t entertain that world any more.”
At All Points East, Sykes ate his words. “A few months ago I said rock was a load of shite,” he admitted. “This festival has shown me I was wrong. I don’t know what I was fucking talking about. Rock is alive.” He then led the crowd in an acoustic, sing-along rendition of fan favorite “Sleepwalking.”
