Here’s the Album We Have to Thank for Oli Sykes Being Into Metal

There are moments you wish you could travel back in time to stop, in the hopes of making the future brighter. And now, we know one of them: Bring Me The Horizon frontman Oli Sykes has revealed what album got him into metal as a youth.

Responding to podcast Sobre La Dosis via Cameo, Sykes was asked what album got him into metal. And while he cites Linkin Park as an influence — which is pretty obvious given his band’s recent candy-coated collaboration with Ed Sheeran — he says it’s one of metalcore’s finest that actually paved the way for him.

“The first metal record I bought… so it depends what you define as metal. The first couple of records were like Linkin Park and stuff like that. The first album that I was like ‘wow this is metal’ was Killswitch Engage… I guess it’s [Alive Or Just Breathing from 2002]. I remember I put that record on for the first time, I was like ‘oh my god this is too heavy.’ We were going on holiday – I was going to Spain on a bus from England and it took like, 24 hours and I just bought [the album] just before I got on the bus. When I first listened to it, I was like ‘this too heavy for me. I don’t like it. It’s too crazy.’ And then I had nothing else to listen to, so I just kept listening to it and by the time I got to Spain I was fucking in love with it.

“I think that’s really what got me into like… got my taste for heavy music because after that I was listening to all kinds of different death metal like Decapitated and Suffocation and like, just harder shit like Zao and stuff like that, which I’m thankful for.”

So there you have it — we need to pinpoint when Oli was on holiday, find that moment in the timestream, and stop him. We can shove a blink-182 album in his hands instead, make it pop-punks’ problem.

Check out the full video below: