Bring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes Breaks Silence on the Band’s Split with Jordan Fish
At the tail end of 2023, Bring Me the Horizon made the unexpected announcement that keyboardist Jordan Fish was no longer a member of the band. Both sides took to social media to let fans know of the change and their statements were both pretty amicable sounding. Yet according to frontman Oli Sykes, there was more to the story than initially revealed.
At the time, the band released the following statement announcing Fish’s removal from the band.
“Bring Me The Horizon has decided to part ways with Jordan Fish. We want to thank him for the musical journey he took with us and wish him luck with everything in the future. Meanwhile we continue to work on Nex Gen, with brand new music coming very soon. See you on our UK tour in January.”
However, details of the split surfaced during Sykes’ recent interview with Revolver following the release last week of Post Human: NeX GEn. With the band’s former member credited on a number of songs on the full-length album, Sykes said the decision to part ways was necessary in order for the band to continue.
“The main reason it was delayed is because of personal reasons within the band, and it was directly connected to Jordan leaving. Things weren’t good last year, as a unit, and the writing suffered because of that. It slowed down to a halt.”
Noting that the main issue stemmed from how he and Fish would write music near the tail end of their time as bandmates, Sykes said Bring Me the Horizon eventually began relying on digital methods of songwriting instead of actually using their instruments in the studio. When he and Fish worked together, that unfortunately left the rest of the band in the lurch, he said.
“Me and Jordan were like a force. We turned into the ‘Oli and Jordan Show’ without really realizing it.
“Ever since I got out of rehab, just before Sempiternal, I really had to throw myself into something, and I guess that was music. I became addicted to writing, and learning how to sing and produce. And Jordan was my partner in that kind of pursuit. We wrote all the time. I didn’t realize how much we pushed the other guys out.”
Though he said he doesn’t rule out the chance for him and Fish to work together again, Sykes also revealed that he hasn’t heard from the keyboardist since the split last December. To Fish’s credit, he’s been busy with other projects, like collaborating on an Architects song and helping Spiritbox with their next studio effort.
“I’m not going to bullshit and say, ‘Oh, it was amicable and we all ended on good terms and stuff.’ End of day, it’s like any breakup… but there’s no juicy story or anything. There’s no headline there. At the same time, there’ll be some wounds on both sides that are going to take a bit longer to heal before [getting back] on communicating terms again.”
