amo Tracklist
Amo, often stylised as “amo,” “ᴀᴍᴏ” or “ａｍｏ” (Portuguese word for “[I] love”) is Bring Me the Horizon’s sixth studio album. Described by Jordan Fish as the toughest thing he’d ever done in his life, it continues to depart from the band’s metalcore roots towards a more alternative rock sound. This album’s the follow up to the band’s critically acclaimed fifth record That’s The Spirit.
As the title amo indicates, the album is much about love. Between That’s The Spirit and this album, Oli went through a divorce, which obviously fed his inspiration, as he stated:
The whole album deals with different things like that, whether it’s the way I’m looking at it, heartbreak, finding new love—it’s exploring all these little different things. It’s quite an easy way to make a concept album because everything comes down to love at the end of the day.
After divorcing, Oliver started touring in South America and came to Brazil in 2016. In this country, he met Alissa Salls and started dating with her. This is why the album is full of Portuguese citations and references, she’s the reason why Oli made an album that talks about love.
The band teased something called “MANTRA” for several weeks before its release as the album’s lead single on August 21st, 2018. Several posters and cryptic messages were set around London and a website called join mantra popped online. After the single’s premiere, the album was announced along with pre-orders and the First Love World Tour.
Before recording amo, Oliver Sykes and Jordan Fish tried to produce nu-metal band Limp Bizkit, but they failed, as Jordan said:
Not many people know that Oli and I went to LA last year to work with Limp Bizkit. We were going to produce their album and it… didn’t work, but that’s a whole other conversation. Anyway, the main riff in this song [“wonderful life”] is one we had for them that we ended up not using. It’s this really low-tuned, bouncy nu-metal riff and if we only got one thing out of that absolutely terrible experience, then at least we have this. […]
So, the second single for the album is “wonderful life,” considered by Fish as “one of the heavier ones on the album.”
On final thoughts about the album, Sykes said:
It’s time people brought out albums for the people that don’t listen to the radio, for people that just love music and want to be arrested by an album, sit and listen to it, not just press play and have some tracks while they’re doing their homework. You can’t put [this album] in the background. It might not be as heavy as our last record—or it might be, I don’t even know—but what’s important is that it’s exciting and exhilarating. Even if it’s a poppier song, it’s a million times more exciting than the shit you hear on the radio. It’s emotional, it’s got depth and it’s always going to grab you and make you feel something.
Bring Me The Horizon teased a song for weeks, calling the teasers as “250mg” and “400mg.” After some days, it was revealed that “medicine” was dropping on January 3rd.
“mother tongue” was choose as the album’s fourth single and “nihilist blues” as the fifth.
“amo” Q&A
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What have the artists said about the album?
Vocalist Oliver Sykes has described the album as the following:
A love album that explores every aspect of that most powerful emotion. It deals with the good, the bad and the ugly, and as a result we’ve created an album that’s more experimental, more varied, weird, and wonderful than anything we’ve done before.
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What is the album’s lyrical inspiration?
I went through a divorce a couple of years ago and I really didn’t want to talk about. I don’t want it to seem like I care, and I didn’t want to dredge up the past. I didn’t want to give the person the ‘glory’ of writing stuff about them and shit like that. After it, while it just became apparent that I needed to. I needed to get it out of my system.
It wasn’t the fact that I was miserable, I was fine. At the same time when you go through something traumatic, you carry a lot of stuff with you after it. There’s a lot of mental baggage. Whatever happened in that situation, I took that on. Maybe I started trusting people less, and it’s completely irrational—but you do. I’ve always said it, but writing music and lyrics is the most therapeutic thing. I’m really lucky in that sense because it’s the best way to get stuff out, you know? To write about it and sing it on stage.
It’s not just about that. There’s good stuff, there’s bad stuff, there’s weird stuff. It’s kind of more like a think-piece on love and how it can effect you. Not just you, but other people. You go into a relationship and people pick sides. There’s a pack mentality. It’s quite an easy way to write a concept album about love. Everything boils down to love in the end.
Obviously ‘Amo’ is Portuguese for ‘I love,’ obviously there’s the ‘ammunition’ part and then in European Portuguese, it means ‘master.’ It sounds happy, but there are all these hidden meanings that make it more complex.
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Why go on a poppier direction?
I like the fact that we have a catalog where, you get a lot of people that get into maybe, That’s The Spirit, or Sempiternal or some of the new songs and then they go back; it’s almost like a little breadcrumb trail where people will maybe start off with “medicine,” before they know it, they like “MANTRA,” “wonderful life” and then they go back and they start to really get into the vibe of the band and it’s not just about how poppy it is or how accessible it is. They really feed into the lyrics and what we stand for and stuff like that. We’re not ashamed to be like… We want to be that band. We want to be that gateway band for people to get into rock music and stuff and keep it going.
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What was Oli listening to while writing the album?
Some old dance stuff like SNAP!, old Creamfields records, or Bonkers/old happy hardcore shit in places. For “MANTRA” we wanted to make a poppy Pantera song mixed with Tame Impala or Radiohead; we’re trying to do what we’ve done in the past where it could sit on the radio, but some songs sound like dance songs. Obviously, they don’t, but the influences are a lot stronger than we’ve ever dared before.
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Album Translations:
