Bring Me The Horizon
POST HUMAN: NeX GEn
Release: May 24, 2024
Article by Laur Wirth
Long anticipated, but very unexpectedly, Bring Me The Horizon has finally blessed us with their album POST HUMAN: NeX Gen – or should we say E.V.E. has finally leaked it? Lead singer Oliver Sykes published a post announcing the release of the album just a few hours before the scheduled midnight release on May 24th. And while everyone expected it to come soon, no one expected the announcement this immediate and with Oli in a cat maid costume holding up the announcement on a piece of paper.
With the first part of the POST HUMAN series created during the COVID pandemic and the first song being released in 2021, it's really been a long ride, not only for the fans but for the band as well. In the end they've blessed us with a 16-track album, including 10 new songs, one of them featuring fans who attended the UK tour!
Photo by Vasso Vu
It all starts off with [ost] dreamseeker. It's a really short track, but still a great intro to the album. With the footsteps and the muffled sounds, it gives off the vibes of someone walking into a lab and it pulls the listener into the lore that is the album.
With YOUtopia, the second song off of the album, we get much more of an "explanation" to what the album, or story, is about. YOUtopia (also read as "utopia") features lyrics that can be interpreted as the protagonist being a lab rat of the whole story. It also sort of foreshadows what's to come, with you or all of us being the utopia. YOUtopia is in all of us.
The third song is Kool-Aid, which I previously wrote about here. In context it emphasizes the whole YOUtopia theory, talking more about control over people, with a lot of references and sayings to and from the Jonestown massacre. This also reflects that the Church of Genxsis (a fictional cult made up by the band for the storyline) is in fact not a religion but a cult that lures you in until you can't get out anymore. But it's more dystopian, a contradictory to the utopia previously mentioned.
Top 10 staTues tHat CriEd bloOd has a similar melody to LoST, a song already released in 2023. The lyrics also reference to sTraNgeRs with "The fight's inside, I'll take myself to hell and back", which correlates with "We've dragged ourselves through hell and we'll be damned if we go back". Follow You and Drown from their album That's The Spirit (2015) also have a few references in this song.
"No one's gonna come and rescue me
I'm drowning in my sleep
The scars have got too deep
And no amount of love could set you free
The fight's inside, I'll take myself to hell and back
Tonight we go to war"
Next on we have liMOusIne featuring Norwegian artist AURORA. A collaboration no one expected but we all definitely needed. Oli mentions "blue angels" and cutting his teeth on "a diamond" in the beginning, indicating this song could be about substance abuse. Following, the lyrics are making this point even more likely.
"Feelin' good but it's never good enough
Got a bellyache crawlin' in my guts again
Come closer
I'll swallow the bile for you"
The bridge on this one can be interpreted as a paranoia episode following drug use, the whole song being like someone from Church of Genxsis drugged them to control them. The song could also be interpreted as a look into Oli's head during his own personal struggles, it sounds very heavy and down-dragging, almost like a weight on your shoulders that also gives you a lot of comfort.
DArkSide, a previously released song, is almost like a cry for help and company – to not be alone during a time when the dark side of you takes over. It feels like a more extreme, more angsty version, and somewhat of a follow up to Drown, except this time they can't escape it by themselves anymore and there is no relief from the pain.
a bulleT w/ my namE On feels like a final goodbye letter, or maybe something being read at a funeral; the old protagonist could've died. Did the Church of Genxsis finally manipulate them to the point where they lost themselves? With a storyline that could be from 13 Reasons Why, just more hardcore, the song, featuring Underoath, feels like a goodbye to someone or something.
Next comes [ost] (spi)ritual, a 1-minute and 54-seconds-long instrumental. People all over Reddit and Discord have been saying that it sounds a lot like a Sleep Token song. Since both were on tour together, maybe we can expect a collab soon?
n/A might be more special to some people than others. Oli openly talking about his addiction and the desire to escape, and about his personal struggles with mental health. Why it's so special to fans may be because the people who attended the UK leg of the tour got to be a part of the song! In different cities they recorded two lines that the audience had to sing, and they included these in the song. The song is reminiscent of sharing your story in an AA / NA group meeting.
"Hi, my name's Oli and I'm an addict (Hi, Oli) I'm here 'cause I'm not quite all there (...)
[Verse 2, the crowd:]
Hello, Oli, you fucking knobhead
Did you think you had us fooled?"
Next up we have LosT, which was released in May of 2023 after two years of working on it. This song in particular is very personal to Oli, singing about his own struggles – from his ADHD medicine not working, his dog Oskar dying, to his former drug addiction. LosT is a fast-paced and energetic song, in contrast to the very serious and dark lyrics.
sTraNgeRs follows the storyline of depression and mental illness, but not about one single person. We all struggle with something and are never alone with it, there is always someone we can reach out to – even if it's a stranger. There's no judgement, we are united in this.
R.i.p. (duskCOre RemIx) has almost like a Kingslayer vibe to it, and also features references to previous songs. Lyrics about being backstabbed by friends have appeared in their songs since 2008 with Sleep With One Eye Open, indicating it's about someone who deeply betrayed him. Especially in the outro, it indicates that this friend is finally a piece of history and "dead" to the protagonist.
"We've gathered here today to honour the memory of the f***
And although they are no longer with us
They live on in our thoughts and in our hearts (God bless me)
We will start today's ceremony with a few words from a dear friend"
R.i.p seamlessly continues into the next track AmEN!, featuring Lil Uzi Vert. AmEN! is the "few words" mentioned in the outro of R.i.p. The song references the swimming test done during the witch trials to see if the sentenced women were witches or not, and also the movie The Exorcist, which could lead back the cult of Church of Genxsis. With Oli singing "All Hail Nex Gen, can I get an amen?", the religious aspect is emphasized even better, if you don't want to believe in the religion, you will be forced to it.
Coming close to the end, we have [ost] p.u.s.s.-e, an abbreviation for Pineal Upregulation Synthetic Substance – Enhanced, which according to the song's Spotify canvas is a tablet to be consumed which increases the respond to stimulus by many folds. It's indicated that this drug will lead you to "YOUtopia". The sound effects and the voices are edited, sounding like an ad, and reminiscent of the one on the genxsis.faith website.
"Do you want to join the millions of people that have already ascended to YOUtopia?"
Track 15 on the album is DiE4u, the song it all started with. It thematizes addiction and that it is possible to get out of it, but it's harder than what people who's never gone through it might think. They know that it's harming them, but being so deeply stuck in it and feeling so hopeless, there is no way out – especially not without proper help.
With DIg It, another lore starts but the album ends. The song starts with an intro from M8 (from the Multidimensional Navigator site I'll tell you about shortly). Oli is talking about the demons taking over, most likely after everything that the Church of Genxsis did after promising to fix him. The song is more calm in the beginning, the total opposite to the rest of the album, getting more dramatic towards the end.
Fans quickly figured out that if you look at the spectrogram of the song, there is a QR code at the end of the outro, in the white noise, which leads to a website. And by looking the spectrograms of the whole song, doing some digging and a lot of team work, the mystery of multidimensionalnavigator8.help started. It has united fans all over Reddit and Discord to figure out the endless list of cryptic passwords and the secret behind the website. It is super interesting what they did, they weren't the first ones to do it but if you have some free time, go to the website end join the BMTH Discord for the passwords, browse through the website and find out all the cool easter eggs that they've included on it.
Purchase / stream the full album POST HUMAN: NeX GEn here.
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