Bring Me The Horizon donned corpse paint for a performance at a festival in Finland – check out the footage below.
The Sheffield rockers played at the Tuska festival in Helsinki, Finland, on Saturday (June 29), one of the biggest metal festivals in the Nordic region. Attendees could sit in a chair and let professional make-up artists give them a look fit for the festival, and the same team worked on Bring Me The Horizon’s corpse paint, too.
“In the festival area you can refresh your own corpse masks too at the Tuska Expo’s loft in Kattilahalli by Ulottuvuusmatkat Oy,” Tuska said while the festival was on. “The same team also created the stage make-up of Bring Me The Horizon, so the merits are in order.”
Frontman Oli Sykes posted a few photos of himself and his bandmates with their make-up look on Instagram.
Corpse paint is a style of body paint most often used by black metal bands, as well as bands who play other extreme forms of metal, while similar paint styles have also been worn by shock rock artists like Alice Cooper and KISS. It embodies the darkness and rebellion that’s so present in the music.
Black metal had its origins in Norway, but is popular all over the Nordic countries, including in Finland, as are other metal subgenres. In fact, The Atlantic reported in 2013 that Finland boasted the most metal bands per capita in the world, with almost 54 bands per 100,000 inhabitants – a fact even Barack Obama has mentioned before.
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Also performing at Tuska this year included metalcore five-piece Parkway Drive and Pendulum, well-known for merging hard rock with drum ‘n’ bass.
Meanwhile, Bring Me The Horizon are currently touring their latest album, ‘Post Human: Nex Gen’, which was released on May 24. It was the band’s first album since the departure of keyboardist and producer Jordan Fish, who was in the band from 2012 until 2023.
In a four-star review, NME said: “Few modern rock bands have made an album that is such a bombardment of sound and colour. Post-Jordan Fish, they continue to be what they’ve always been: a creative force that transcends the personalities of its individuals. It entirely justifies the four-year wait, which already feels like ancient history. Buckle up – because this is still BMTH’s world, and we’ll be living in it for quite some time yet.”
Speaking to NME last month, Bring Me The Horizon discussed the new album and Fish’s departure, with Sykes saying: “Obviously Jordan was a massive part of this band. He was my right-hand man and we were a creative force. I know that a lot of the time we were spoken about as a duo. Where we started to break off was the fact that after ‘Survival Horror’, I started to think about and address the way we were being.”
He added: “This whole record is a proper narrative that actually explains the first record. I’ve realised that what I’ve been doing for years is building this world in my head and not telling anyone about it. That narrative is going to feed into the next one and I don’t want to give it all away because the way the record ends for me personally is realising that I’ve got to leave.”
Tomorrow (July 5) the band are playing Main Square Festival in Arras, France, before more dates across Europe. They’re then playing a few shows in Asia next month, before heading off to Latin America in November and December to round off the year. You can find tickets to some of their upcoming shows here, and the rest on their website.