The 11 best Bring Me The Horizon songs

With BMTH headlining Reading & Leeds next summer, we rank their greatest tracks

Once upon a time, the ascent of Bring Me The Horizon looked like an unimaginable concept. Formed in Sheffield in 2004, they spent their early days making scrappy deathcore and garnering plenty of fans but also a staunch army of haters. At the turn of the 2010s, they underwent a caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation, swapping deathcore for emotionally confrontational metal. With the addition of multi-instrumentalist Jordan Fish for their landmark 2013 album Sempiternal, they crafted a body of work that went on to be one of the defining metal records of the decade.

But it was 2015’s That’s The Spirit that cemented their legacy of British rock music. From then on, they indisputably became the torchbearer among their peers, proving that there didn’t have to be a ceiling for heavy music at all. They’ve performed at the BRITS with Ed Sheeran, ushered in a new modern era for Download Festival when they headlined in 2023, and next year they will top the bill at Reading & Leeds for the second time. The first time round, they even had the audacity to bring out Ed Sheeran as their guest.

BMTH’s discography is so far-reaching that it often splits fans down the middle. Some are still devotees of their more abrasive early work and consider anything past a certain point selling out – but their 2006 debut album, Count Your Blessings, is arguably appreciated more nowadays than it was at the time. Others don’t have the same purist approach and strongly appreciate their more polished arena metal.

But for all of their sound changes, which of their hits comes out on top? Here is our definitive ranking.

11. ‘MANTRA’

(amo, 2019)

Bring Me The Horizon’s experimental sixth album sent some fans running for the door. Its daring flirtations with disparate genres was skilled but not universally loved, yet ‘MANTRA’ was its sole ambassador during live shows. It’s closer to a quintessential BMTH track than some of the others from amo, albeit with a scuzzier edge, but its ominous references to cults, hypnotherapy and organised religion paved the way for their more extensive world building in the POST HUMAN era to follow.

10. ‘Kool Aid’

(POST HUMAN: NeX GEn, 2024)

At the top of 2024, the ground under Bring Me The Horizon’s feet was a little shaky. The second instalment in their POST HUMAN series had been repeatedly delayed (it would be surprise-released in May that year) and Jordan Fish – a huge influence over their sound and career trajectory – had quit after months of speculation. ‘Kool-Aid’ was their chance to re-solidify themselves, and that it did. Bringing a cut-throat edge to the more modern BMTH sound – notably heavier without Fish’s influence – it wryly danced on the line between abrasive and anthemic. It was a different flavour of arena-made heaviness, but it was explosive nonetheless.

9. ‘Chelsea Smile’

(Suicide Season, 2008)

If BMTH are going to chuck a throwback moment into their live set, it might well be with this rager from the late 00s. This vicious cut from their second album is their most played song live (even if it’s not always a regular fixture anymore), and it’s a thrill with the way its adrenalised, slashing riffs coalescing with frontman Oli Sykes’ barbed screams. It has both a dark party spirit and a sense of danger, and even if Bring Me have progressed considerably since it came out, it’s still aged remarkably well.

8. ‘Throne’

(That’s The Spirit, 2015)

Bring Me The Horizon aren’t usually a band to write music with big grins on their faces, but ‘Throne’ is a flash of light in an often dark back catalogue. Brightened with kinetic synths and rousing vocals, this track is a triumphant anthem for fighting back against a barrage of adversities, but it’s still got a gritty undertone. The battle-scarred Oli might be standing tall but he’s not merciful – “I’ll leave you choking/With every word you left unspoken,” is just one particularly barbed line. It’s different yet totally in character, and utterly powerful.

7. ‘It Never Ends’

(There Is A Hell, Believe Me I’m Seen It, There Is A Heaven, Let’s Keep It A Secret, 2010)

After years of derision, it was when Bring Me The Horizon released their tongue-twister-titled third album that people really began sitting up. This was a newer, more mature band whose work was shooting up in quality, and ‘It Never Ends’ is a sterling example of their growth. Majestic, a touch symphonic and with a greater sense of gravity to Oli’s anguish – hinting at the depression that would colour his songwriting for the years to come – this song made their eventual world domination feel less like a pie-in-the-sky idea.

6. ‘Happy Song’

(That’s The Spirit, 2015)

How do you follow an album as groundbreaking as Sempiternal? Bring Me answered that question by swerving in an entirely different direction. Purists wrinkled their noses in the belief that they were going soft, but the driving, downtuned lead single from That’s The Spirit hardly represented a betrayal of their own identity. It’s almost an anti-anthem with a tongue-in-cheek cheerleader chant and a sarcastic hook, “So let’s all sing along a little f*cking louder/To a happy song and pretend it’s all okay,” but it’s also a sadly prescient ode to miserable times – “The world has coalesced/Into one giant mess of hate unrest.” Let’s sing along a little f*cking louder indeed.

5. ‘Kingslayer’

(Post Human: Survival Horror, 2020)

In the 2020s, Bring Me The Horizon have let themselves be a bit zany when they want to be. While they’d build on it for the second instalment of their POST HUMAN series, ‘Kingslayer’ is as quirky as volume one gets, bolstered by a guest turn from Babymetal which dials up its sense of eccentricity. Post-lockdown, it would become a staple of alternative club mixes, but at the time of its release it was an escapist portal taking listeners away from the dullness of the pandemic-induced groundhog days.

4. ‘AmEn’

(Post Human: NeX Gen, 2024)

Debuted in scintillating style – and with a lot of fire on stage – during BMTH’s triumphant Download headliner in 2023, ‘AmEn’ arrived as a scorching statement of intent. Not only does it sound absolutely massive, but its daring fusion of arena metal, emo and SoundCloud rap is some genius songwriting sleight-of-hand. Having features from both Glassjaw’s Darly Palumbo and Lil Uzi Vert should not work on paper, but somehow, their contributions are both seamless despite being very different artists. This is modern BMTH at its best, and a shining example of the forward-thinking boundary-pushing that’s nudged them towards the head of the pack.

3. ‘Shadow Moses’

(Sempiternal, 2013)

It might have spawned the ‘sandpit turtle’ meme – based on a mishearing of its mosh call – that emos cackled over in their rooms in the early 2010s, but that’s not the only reason ‘Shadow Moses’ is so well known. Indeed, the lead single from BMTH’s fourth album fired the starting gun on one of their most important eras as a band. It follows on quite naturally from There Is A Hell… but with both more aggression, more grace and for the first time, the wizardry of multi-instrumentalist Jordan Fish, an arguably underappreciated part of what elevated their sound so much at this period of time. Moshing is practically mandatory.

2. ‘Dear Diary,’

(Post Human: Survival Horror, 2020)

The first instalment of the POST HUMAN series dropped with the timing only a clairvoyant could have foreseen. It may have been written as a response to the dread and monotony of the initial Covid-19 shutdown, but it was released as the UK was on the tipping point of restrictions returning in late 2020. As such, it was made for the moment, and opener ‘Dear Diary,’ epitomized that brilliantly. Bristling with the feeling of jittering panic, it captured the confusion and chaos of the time with knife-edged precision while also offering a burst of heaviness that hadn’t been heard from them in a while. In seven words, it presented perhaps the best way to sum up the apocalyptic mood of the time: “The sky is falling/It’s f*cking boring.”

1. ‘Can You Feel My Heart’

(Sempiternal, 2013)

Sempiternal’s opening track has been increasingly appreciated with time, even going viral on TikTok some nine years after it was first released. It’s a track of cinematic proportions where Oli’s howled lines pierce with more emotion than ever, inspired by the start of his journey in fighting an addiction to ketamine. Later, its bridge offers some especially immortal lines – “The higher I get, the lower I sink/I can’t drown my demons, they’ve learned how to swim,” – that were omnipresent on emo kids’ Tumblr pages for years. Quiet when it needs to be, blazing when it has to be, this is an essential listen.