Bring Me The Horizon on how ‘Wild Wild Country’ inspired new single ‘Mantra’

"Starting a cult is like starting a relationship"

Bring Me The Horizon‘s Oli Sykes has revealed how the acclaimed documentary Wild Wild Country inspired the lyrics and video for their new single ‘Mantra’.

Watch our ‘Song Stories’ video with Sykes above

Taken from the band’s upcoming new album ‘Amo‘, ‘Mantra was born from an old house sample that Sykes found before it evolved into the thunderous riff you hear today. Then, while Sykes was writing lyrics and watching Netflix in the studio as his house was being decorated, he stumbled across Wild Wild Country – the story of a man named Osho who travels from India to America to start a cult.

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“As I was watching it and trying to write these lyrics, I was getting all of these similarities into how starting a cult is like starting a relationship or starting a marriage,” Sykes told NME. “You’ve got to give yourself over to a person and trust them and love them unconditionally. Whatever they say goes and you have to have this blind faith towards them. You might have to give up your whole life to be with them.”

He continued: “That’s how it started. It kind of blossomed into being about a bit more than a relationship, because I think we are quite tribal people. People want to belong to a cult. I think it’s a problem now more than ever, because people say they want to believe in someone, then they don’t want to admit that it’s wrong because it doesn’t agree with what they initially said.”

Bring Me The Horizon ReadingBring Me The Horizon’s Oli Sykes backstage at Reading Festival 2018. Credit: Jenn Five/NME

Then, the band’s explosive music video for ‘Mantra’ became inspired by the very same documentary.

“It made the video treatment quite easy to write,” Sykes admitted. “It’s quite illustrative – you can see what’s happening. The video is about this guy who starts a cult, that’s me. Basically, he’s depressed, disillusioned and brainwashed from watching TV and doing nothing with his life.”

“He decides to start this cult which does a lot better than he expected and gets out of hand until the rest of the world is in it. The government is talking about it and it becomes a problem.”

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Sykes added: “Then the guy who started the cult is in the same position at the end, he’s still watching TV and unhappy because he realises he doesn’t want all this stuff. He doesn’t want to be loved by everyone.”

‘Amo’ is released on January 11, 2019.

Bring Me The Horizon tour dates and tickets

The band’s full upcoming UK tour dates are below. Visit here for tickets and more information.

November 2018
23 – Birmingham Arena, Birmingham
24  – First Direct Arena, Leeds
25  – SSE Hydro, Glasgow
27  – Motorpoint Arena, Cardiff
29  – Alexandra Palace, London

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