Bring Me The Horizon performs in São Paulo with confusion between cities and nostalgia for their debut album

Practically with a CPF to call his own, Oli, the vocalist, did everything: he invited a fan dressed in a Brazil shirt to sing on stage, surprised the audience that has been with him since the beginning with songs from his first album and even got drunk calling Rio de Janeiro São Paulo.

The group from Sheffield opened the show with “DArkSide”, a hit track from the album “Post Human: Nex Gen (2024)”. Before, warned: this show contains scenes of graphic violence and gore. On the screen, “press start” appeared for several minutes, seducing the public to play a game.

The entire aesthetic of the performance, from then on, was set up to look like a big video game set on a map full of skulls, tombs and debris.

The band's last visit was in November 2024, when they played one of the biggest shows of their career, at the packed Morumbi stadium, in São Paulo, as part of the “NX_GN WRLD TOUR”. On that occasion, they called on singer Pabllo Vittar to sing "Antivist” (2013).

Formed by Oliver Sykes (vocals), Lee Malia (guitar), Matt Nicholls (drums) and Matt Kean (bass), the quartet has built a very curious trajectory over these two decades. It started in deathcore and gradually incorporated melodic, electronic and pop elements, until it reached a more commercial contemporary rock.

On stage, Oli spoke a lot in Portuguese: “are you going to have a party?”, “our lady”, “feijoada de puta” (?) and even said “please, São Paulo”, by mistake. Then he made a point of redeeming himself: “Come on, Rio de Janeiro. Come on, damn it. Let's go.”

This is because the vocalist has a very unique relationship with the country. He has been married since 2017 to Brazilian model Alissa Salls. They are parents to twins Gray and Zélia and keep a house in Taubaté, in the interior of São Paulo. Which might help explain the confusion. Or get worse.

In total, there were around 15 songs spread over an hour and a half show. The repertoire also had space for tracks like “Pray For Plagues”, from the debut album, “Count Your Blessings” (2006).

And that was one of the fans' expectations. Since the beginning of the show, a kind of ghost hovered there, in the air. And let me explain: in July, not long ago, Bring Me The Horizon released “Count Your Blessings | Repented”, a re-recording of their debut album, originally released in 2006. “Repetended” means “repented”.

The idea of ​​the re-release, according to the band, was to create a kind of “recontextualization” of the moment that they consider to be the “heaviest” of their career, linked to deathcore. This is a phase that the group itself spent years trying to leave behind, and whose songs were even removed from show setlists.

In an interview, Oli explained the decision to make this reckoning: "I realized how much that album still speaks to me. It's no longer something distant for me."

The vocalist, who is practically one of ours, even said at one point, when asking the audience to open mosh pits, “Don’t disappoint me Brazil”.

The audience, devoted and provoked by the singer, quickly tried to form as many circles as they could, complete with flares of all kinds of color.

In the midst of the headbanging, no one seemed to care whether the video game map was being played in São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro.

From above, he said, astonished, in Portuguese: “you are crazy”. Afterwards, he said that he loved the country very much, wrapped himself in the green and yellow flag, joked that he has pix and ended up in the arms of the crowd. He understood: Brazilians know how to play the game.