We couldn’t resist to ask Matt Nicholls from the British rock band Bring Me The Horizon the most asked questions on the internet. As the drummer of the group, he has a lot of interesting things to tell us. For example how much he knows about Gigachad…
In advance of this interview, we looked up the most asked questions on the search engine and prepared them for Matt. From the band’s logo to his favorite Bring Me The Horizon album, there is a lot to talk about! Maybe you will find out something entirely unexpected about your favorite band here. You can watch the interview on our YouTube channel, but we’ve also linked it down below. If you prefer to read, just scroll through the transcript right here.
Answering The Most Asked Questions On The Internet: Matt Nicholls
What genre is BMTH?
Matt: I don’t know. We get asked this a lot, especially when no one’s ever heard the band. You know, it’s like: “Oh, what do you do for a living?” “Oh, I play in a band.” I always just say rock music, just generalize it. But I guess you could say we’re a bit more than just a rock band. Well, we’d like to think we are. So yeah, I just generalize it and say rock. But we’re influenced by a lot of things like metal, dance music, hiphop, movie soundtracks, game soundtracks, anything. When we think something sounds good and we think it could benefit our band and we could incorporate those influences into the music we’re making then why not use it, you know? It’s better than just pinching a hole in yourself and just writing the same old stuff over and over again. You've got to broaden your horizons - no pun intended. Yeah, just enjoy what you’re making. Soak everything up like a big old sponge.
What are BMTH songs about?
Matt: Life, I guess. Mainly our singer’s life. We would find it hard to sing about stuff that didn’t really mean anything to us. Do you know what I mean? Maybe in the past we got some of the more metal songs where we’re just trying to be outrageous, trying to be like metal and just those daft lyrics about lakes of fire and dragons and stupid shit. But I think nowadays it’s more from the heart, emotions, feelings, just the way the world is. You’d be better off asking our singer about lyrics and stuff, so I’m taking a guess. But I reckon it’s just about life.
What is the meaning of BMTH?
Matt: It’s from Pirates of the Caribbean, the first film. We used it as a lyric.
“Bring me that horizon”
- Jack Sparrow (Johnny Depp)
We changed it to Bring Me The Horizon and I think, yeah, it was a lyric when we didn’t really have a band name. For some reason it just stood out to us and we were like “We should probably call our band that”. So we ended up doing that. But I guess, I mean, it’s not just a - we’re not massive fans of Pirates of the Caribbean or whatever, but I think it just meant, like, it was a kind of mood we were in when we were young. We wanted to travel the world and go about, go and do things and, you know, go and see things. And I think it kind of captured how we were feeling about being young and being in a band and wanting to - making more of your life and getting out and seeing things and doing things and just not be in our hometowns.
What DAW does BMTH use?
Matt: To record? Oh, Pro Tools. Yeah, Jordan’s quite a genius when it comes to our DAW. But yeah, Pro Tools. I mean, I’m sure we’ve dabbled in other things and whatever, but mainly it’s just Pro Tools. Like I was saying, Jordan’s a genius when it comes to stuff like that. He knows all the shortcuts and stuff. Pro Tools.
What is the best BMTH album?
Matt: For me, probably Sempiternal. I think because it came from when the band was in a really weird place. We didn’t really know what we were doing, we were kinda just worn out. A lot of us had a lot of personal problems. Olli went to rehab. We were all just in light limbo with the band, really. We didn’t know if the band was gonna be a band. So we were in a weird place before that. I think, like I was saying, we were just burned out, didn't know what to do. And then everyone went through stuff and we got our heads back together. Brought Jordan in for a little help with the writing. I think we came out with the best stuff we’ve ever written. I like them all, to an extent. Sempiternal for me is the best Bring Me The Horizon album.
What does the BMTH star symbol mean?
Matt: Uhm. It’s just a hexagram. I’m guessing it’s like an alchemy symbol or something, but we used it for our single “Antivist” and it kinda stuck around. Someone made us like an interpretation of it. They just changed the shape a little bit. [...] It’s the same shape, it’s still a hexagram. But we just kinda did our own interpretation and yeah, it just stuck with us. And now we kinda just run with it. I like it, cause I do the merch and I can just put it on the merch and it’s easy. But when the way I look to the merch is; I look at brands, and big brands have a logo, you know? So yeah, I’m guessing it’s just an alchemy symbol what we stole and ran with.
Does BMTH know about Gigachad?
Matt: Yes. Um, it’s frightening. I’m not, like, switched on with all the whole TikTok and all this stuff and whatever and you know - maybe if I was a young person still. But I’m old now. But we do know about Gigachad, yeah. I think “Can You Feel My Heart?” is a like a Gigachad anthem or something like that and it’s just some f*** weird internet thing. Just google it! Just google “Gigachad”, it’s just some weird dude with, like, this f*** weird chin and I don’t really know what it is but I’ve seen it. [laughs]
But apparently one of our songs is like the anthem of the Gigachad. But just google it, it’s f*** weird, like 99 percent of the things on the internet these days.
Does BMTH play old songs?
Matt: Not if we can help it. Um, not the very old songs. I mean, we’ve moved on, we’ve come a long way from playing those songs. It’s not really what the band is about anymore. Like, we’ve got better songs, you know? Like, people always ask us to play these old songs and they want to hear the worst songs. But we’ve got better songs. We play some old ones. I say old - they go back to Sempiternal so they’re not that old. But if we have to, if people really want to hear them, we’ll play them all on this tour which we haven’t played in a long time. So yeah, we don’t really play old ones if we can help it. But I guess now and then we might throw one in and surprise people, but like I was saying, we’ve just come a long way. We’re better songwriters, better musicians as well than we were back then.
Does BMTH believe in God?
Matt: No, not really. I mean, no, not in the sense of a hairy, like, bearded man in the clouds, do you know what I mean? I don’t know what I believe in, I’ve never really given it much thought. I’m quite ignorant when it comes to stuff like that. I definitely don’t believe in, like, the Christian sense or anything like that. I mean, maybe I believe that there’s got to be something what’s bigger than us, do you know what I mean? Yeah, for me: Not really. No, don’t believe in God.
Does BMTH use autotune?
Matt: No. Not live. I mean, in the studio, these little tweaks and stuff, but we tweak everything. The drums get samples put over the top of them, you know. Just got to go in the studio and you’ve got to make it sound the best it can sound or you end up with a big pile of s*** and no one’s going to listen to it. But I mean, no, our singer’s just worked his a** off to actually be able to sing. Before Sempiternal he couldn’t sing a note and I’m not even lying there, it was terrible. But he’s worked his ass off, he has singing lessons on the regular. Jordan’s helped him a lot with his singing. Jordan can sing like Freddy Mercury reborn. But no, he’s just a really hard worker. He believes in himself and yeah, he’s done really well. So live we don’t use autotune, but in the studio we might tweak some things. But like I said: You tweak everything in the studio. It’s gotta sound good.
How many songs does BMTH have?
Matt: F*** loads. We’ve been a band for like - how old am I, 36 - maybe eighteen, nearly coming up twenty years. So loads. They vary from not so good to pretty decent. So, yeah, they’re all on the usual streaming services, so listen to them and you might like some, you might not. The answer is loads.
New songs coming? Yeah, we’re actually working on them at the minute. We’ve got a studio on our bus. We did it in America and um, we wrote a bunch of stuff actually. We recorded some stuff in America as well, so hopefully one pretty soon. But yeah, as for the basics of a record, I guess we’ve got some good stuff coming along. It took a while, I think. These things are always hard, especially for us, because our band’s quite perfectionist and we change our mind a lot as well. So it’s hard to … you write something one day and think it’s wicked and then you’ll go and you’ll come back to it and it’s - you don’t think it’s as good as you thought it was originally. But it’s coming! It’s coming, just trust us, trust the process. But we’ve got some good stuff coming along and hopefully, this tour we’ve got a lot of down time where usually we just play FIFA, instead we’re trying to write music. And it’s coming along well. But yeah, we should have a song at least very soon.
Shop Bring Me The Horizon Merch At Impericon
We hope you’ve learned something new about Bring Me The Horizon and got some of your own questions answered. Now is the perfect time to have a look at our Bring Me The Horizon Merch. At Impericon you can find band shirts, hoodies and of course music by the British band as well. We’ve even got the upcoming album POST HUMAN: NeX GEn ready for you as PreOrder on CD, vinyl or even a white colored Vinyl!
