Bring Me The Horizon are constantly expanding their sound, and that's on full display with their catchy new single, "Parasite Eve." The first part of the song mixes some industrial and EDM sounds. There is nothing remotely "rock" about the song at first, and then a pretty fun breakdown and hook kick in about a minute into the song. The whole thing is a journey.
Frontman Oli Sykes spoke to NME about the song and said "This song is going to be part of a record that has the same feel along with [last year's single] 'Ludens.' We've just been winging it and recording from lockdown, and now we're going to make four different records over the next year and they'll all share the name 'Post Human'. They'll each be tonally different with their own sound and mood. That's one thing we've never really done. There's often been an over-arching theme on our records, but the music has always felt like a collage. That's cool and I like it, but sometimes you want a soundtrack for a certain occasion and emotion.
"The idea behind 'Post Human' is looking at how we've stepped out of evolution and the food chain. If we can do that, then we can take responsibility for what we've done to the planet and become something better than what humans are right now."
Sykes said "Parasite Eve" is named after the PlayStation game of the same name, and came about after he bizarrely read about a Japanese superbug before the coronavirus pandemic hit.
"It was really weird," Sykes admitted. "We'd heard about the pandemic in China, but then the similarities between what we were writing about started to become closer to reality. Every time there was a news story about it, we'd turn to each other and say 'Parasite Eve', not realizing the magnitude of it all.
"We shelved the song for a bit because it felt bit too close to the bone. After sitting on it for a while, we realized that this was a reason to release it now more than ever. In our music we've always wanted to escape, but there's been too much escapism and ignoring the problems in the world. It's not what the world needs. The world needs more and needs to think about it and remember. You can't just brush over it and expect life to go back to normal, because it fucking ain't. In so many ways, we need to change. That's what rock music is about — addressing the dark side and processing it."
Sykes continued: "This is a moment we all knew was coming one day, but maybe not in our lifetime. Look at the Black Lives Matter protests too. It felt like we were making progress and people were standing up to injustice, but maybe we got too complacent because it's still happening. It's time to be pissed off. It's not the time to say, 'These days shall pass' and 'everything will be okay,' because it won't fucking be okay unless we fucking do something about it."
