“So come rain on my parade.”
Bring Me the Horizon,
Doomed
As a society, we are addicted to the light. We overvalue pleasant experiences such as happiness, and we shun away difficult ones, such as sadness. But there is an inherent duality to this life. We cannot shine a light unless in darkness. And likewise, we cannot cast a shadow without light. And in life, with ups come downs. In every good, there is bad. And in every bad, there is good.
“You could tear civilization down and rebuild it from scratch, and the same dualities would rise again,” writes Susan Cain in her book Bittersweet. There is no escaping this duality. To negate the darkness is to negate life itself. Being in harmony, then, requires that we embrace this duality — both the light and the darkness.
We talk a lot about mental health awareness nowadays. We pin green ribbons to our shirts, we put up spirited hashtags on social media. But at the end of the day, the meaningfulness of campaigns like this are debatable. Because arguably, most people already know what mental health is. Yet, the same stigmas and inaction keep playing out. We still judge ourselves, and even the people we love, for having “negative” feelings.
Perhaps it’s not so much of mental health awareness that we need today, but mental health understanding. And our lack of understanding, whether of our own mental health or that of others, largely harkens back to our unwillingness to confront the darkness in ourselves and in life.
With this being said, what does it mean, then, to embrace the darkness — or in the words of Joseph Campbell, to “participate joyfully in the sorrows of the world”? This is where we explore the music of Bring Me the Horizon, particularly their album That’s the Spirit.
If I could make a soundtrack of my high school years, Bring Me the Horizon’s music would definitely be a huge part of it. I recently rediscovered their catalogue after being utterly mesmerized by their 2016 Live at the Royal Albert Hall concert with the Parallax Orchestra. The performances, mostly of songs from the then-recent That’s the Spirit album, were so epically reimagined and emotional. I had chills throughout many moments in the concert, and I cried especially during the song Throne.
Thinking about their music now, I realize how articulate the songwriting is. In every song they put out, they say things that are worth saying.
With their album That’s the Spirit, it is a loose concept album that is centrally-themed in the “celebration of the darkness”, especially discussing the subject matter of depression. While the album certainly does not glorify being depressed, it encourages its listeners to not be afraid in facing the darkness of their own thoughts.
To quote the band’s singer and songwriter Oli Sykes, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. Everything may seem bleak and black on the outside, but inside us all is a world of colour and emotion that we need to let take over and not ignore.”
This theme is well-reflected in the album’s simple yet iconic cover of an umbrella. It symbolizes that no matter how badly the rain pours, you can hold up your umbrella and keep moving forward.
In this article, we will be looking at five songs from the album, which I personally think are most representative of its theme.
Happy Song
“I’ve had enough,
There’s a voice in my head,
Says I’m better off dead,
But if I sing along a little louder to a happy song,
I’ll be alright.”
“Depression is a hole in our society,” says Oli. “It’s an unspoken dark cloud that we don’t really accept in our lives. We pretend it’s not there.”
Happy Song, from which the album gets its name, is a social commentary on how we tend to treat depression as something that we could simply snap ourselves out of. The song begins with the cheerleader chants, “S-P-I-R-I-T, spirit! Let’s hear it!”, mirroring how we like to simply pump up people who are depressed into changing their state. We say to them “that’s the spirit” when they finally manage to crack a smile.
As Oli remarked, “‘That’s the spirit’ to me is a depressing thing to say to someone, ’cause you say it when you haven’t really got an answer. When they’re in a bad place and they’ve just got to get on with it, you say, ‘That’s the spirit’, and that’s the world — we’re trying to be happy in all the wrong ways. I think sadness can be just as memorable and profound an experience as happiness.”
We do this not only to other people who aren’t in a good place, but to ourselves too. Rather than sitting with our difficult thoughts and feelings, we lock them away. We distract ourselves with our phones, and even music, hoping that whatever we’re experiencing inside would resolve on its own. But of course, it doesn’t. It only gets bigger and worse.
If you think about it, this is incredibly worrying for our present and future generations. Being so grounded in technology, and considering how most parents are giving their kids their phones, it’s only getting easier and more natural for us to keep distracting ourselves.
Throne
“So you can throw me to the wolves,
Tomorrow I will come back leader of the whole pack.”
Throne is perhaps the most uplifting song in That’s the Spirit, if not in Bring Me the Horizon’s entire catalogue. It is their equivalent of Tom Petty’s classic, I Won’t Back Down, as it is, as Oli put it, about turning your “grief into gold.” All of your pain, traumas and tragedies are not endured in vain, if you could use them to “build your throne”, or to work towards meaningful things in your life.
What makes the song endearing is that its narrator is addressing another person who has caused them a lot of hurt and grief. While the narrator acknowledges the excruciating pain that they have had to bear, they choose to take the high road in forgiving the person, and to focus on their own journey ahead.
As the verse goes, “The sticks and the stones that you used to throw have built me an empire. So don’t even try to cry me a river, ‘cause I forgive you. You are the reason I still fight.”
Oftentimes, the lyrics remind me a lot of the story of Prophet Yusuf (pbuh), or Joseph. I would have a mental image of Yusuf reuniting with his brothers who left him to die many years before. Even though, at that point in the story, he is in a position of power in the king’s court, he chooses not to punish his brothers, and instead forgoes their wrongdoing.
True Friends
“Time won’t help you,
‘Cause karma has no deadline.”
True Friends is about toxic friendships, particularly friends who talk and act in ugly ways behind our back. Borrowing from a quote by Oscar Wilde, that “true friends stab you in the front”, the song doesn’t deny the reality that some level of pain is inevitable in any friendship. But what differentiates true friends from false friends is their ability to communicate any problems directly with us.
One of the things I find interesting about this song is just how angry it is. As compared to Throne, in which the narrator is willing to forgive their enemy, this isn’t the case in True Friends. “I’ll forget, but I’ll never forgive you,” as the chorus sings.
This makes me think about concept of “forced forgiveness” in therapy. More often than not, we feel obligated to forgive someone, because it’s morally the right thing to do, or as I’ve written above, it’s the “high road”, so to speak. But the most important thing to always keep in mind is to be authentic to yourself, especially if the situation is traumatic or abusive. If you don’t feel that you can forgive someone who has wronged you, then you don’t have to do it. Nobody can tell you to “forgive and forget”, because no one is in your shoes but you.
Despite all the anger in the song, it does contain some element of peace and acceptance. The narrator accepts that their false friends are who they are, and doesn’t try to change their nature. As Oli explained, “It’s all about making peace with people that are like that, and realizing that they aren’t your true friends. There’s no point in hating those people because that’s just the kind of people they are.”
Avalanche
“I’m going out of frequency,
Can anyone respond?”
Avalanche is inspired by the time when Oli checked himself into rehab for his addiction to ketamine. This was also when he was diagnosed with ADHD.
As Oli described the experience, “I just went into a general ward, not necessarily for addiction, but there were self-harmers, people struggling with sexuality issues, people who’d been raped, schizophrenics.”
The song is written as if in conversation with a doctor. It expresses the overwhelming feeling that you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, like you can’t bear to go through another day in a world that you “aren’t wired for”. Sometimes when you go through experiences like this, what you need is for someone to tell you that they understand you.
And with that, the song is about how difficult feelings and experiences connect us with one another, perhaps better than happiness can. As he stayed in the ward, Oli felt a sense of communion with the other patients. Even though they were not dealing with the same things, which were ADHD and addiction, they were similarly struggling to navigate their lives.
“All the people in there with all these different things, when you talk to them about what you’re going through, it’s exactly the same,” said Oli. “You’re going through the same things.”
Doomed
“So leave a light on, I’m coming home,
It’s getting darker, but I’ll carry on.
The sun don’t shine, but it never did,
And when it rains, it pours,
But I think I like it.”
Thematically, Doomed is the centerpiece of the album. The song samples sounds from the famous drug scene in the film Requiem for a Dream, likely reflecting Oli’s own struggles with ketamine addiction. And structurally, the changes in tempo parallels the ups and downs of life itself.
In the lyrics, the narrator has gotten to the point where they are utterly exhausted from wrestling with depression. They have also gone through periods of wanting to end their life, saying, “The Devil told me, ‘No room for cheats.’ I thought I sold my soul, but he kept the receipt.”
Ultimately, out of their tiredness, the narrator gives up on the struggle. They embrace the darkness that they had previously shut themselves from, and allow themselves to feel whatever they are feeling. And paradoxically, in doing so, they feel relieved from their suffering.
Maybe they are doomed, the narrator thinks. Maybe the whole world is doomed. And that’s okay. Because that’s just how life is, and there’s nothing we could do to change it. “So come rain on my parade,” as the lyrics go, welcoming the darkness that life inevitably contains.
To quote Oli, “(Doomed is) about how most of my life feels like an unmanageable monster that I can’t keep at bay…Rather than trying to fight these demons, I should embrace them. I guess it’s me realizing that I secretly enjoy this…It’s almost like a euphoric sadness — it cleanses your mind if you just let it happen. And that’s what it’s all about, this album. It’s about celebrating the darkness.”
Coda
In summary, Bring Me the Horizon’s That’s the Spirit sends out a timely and timeless message for us to celebrate the darkness by embracing it, by allowing ourselves to feel our difficult emotions.
“It’s okay to not be okay” may be a cliché nowadays, but it’s true. If darkness is none other than a part of life, we must treat it like so.
Not only that, if you ever feel alone or overwhelmed by the weight of the world, you can always reach out for professional help. And on a more macro level, as a struggling human being myself, I know it may not be much, but I can tell you that I understand you.
As Oli said, “Sadness is the one emotion we can definitely say everyone has — not everyone gets the privilege of being happy, but we all get the privilege of being sad.”
So come rain on our parade. We can hold up our umbrellas.
p.s. If you’re interested to give the album a listen, I’d highly recommend you first check out their Live at the Royal Albert Hall performances (which you can also find in Spotify and other streaming services). While That’s the Spirit is an amazing album in itself, I truly believe the songs were perfected in their Royal Albert Hall concert.
Here’s Doomed.
Izzat Zailan 