Bring Me The Horizon didn't have the best time coming up in the metal scene. In an interview with Metal Injection, guitarist Lee Malia recounted being "booed and bottled" when the band opened for Killswitch Engage and The Haunted on their first European tour in 2007 (Bring Me The Horizon replaced Bury Your Dead on that tour, which probably didn't help either).
"There was this, I don't know – gatekeeping [about how] we didn't fit or we were trying to be metal and all this stuff," said Malia, who later went on to touch on how much opening for bands could suck. "When we used to do support tours, we did one with Machine Head and I'd say eighty-percent of people hated us. Nowadays, I guess people might be more open minded or we're just not being forced to play to people who don't want to watch us."
It's worth noting that the European tour Malia is talking about was in support of Bring Me The Horizon's debut 2006 album Count Your Blessings, which was very deathcore… and boy was there was a divide between deathcore fans and metal fans back then.
Malia went on to point out that folks gatekeeping didn't bother to learn that Malia was actually a metalhead, but notes that he sees where they're coming from to an extent.
"When we first got started, we got hit really bad with the metal guys hating us and giving us shit all the time, but it is what is. I grew up listening to metal. My favorite band was Metallica, but they don't care that you like metal because you're infiltrating their passion. Metalheads especially. It's everything to them a lot of the time. If you're into metal, you don't want these young kids coming in with floppy fringes saying they're playing metal. I get it."
On how things are with Bring Me The Horizon and metal in present day, Malia said fans of different genres are largely cool with one another. At least in his experience. "I couldn't tell you what's changed, but we played Hellfest and had a great crowd. You'd think with the rest of the lineup, that'd be the place we're going to get a lot of shit but we didn't. Maybe people are just up for it [now]."
