Bring Me the Horizon has released a new song, “Obey,” featuring fellow British rocker Yungblud.
The single arrives with a vintage monster-movie music video, featuring Yungblud and BMTH frontman Oli Sykes duking it out inside of giant robots, Neon Genesis Evangelion-style. Although “Obey” is a battle-ready anthem with plenty of guttural screaming from its two leads, the music video takes a less antagonistic route in how the two robots end up settling their differences.
In an interview with BBC Radio 1, Sykes described the song as a “banger” and said it was one of the fastest Bring Me the Horizon songs to ever be created, coming together in around two days.
“We consider ourselves free, but only because the chains are invisible, and we are controlled in ways we don’t even want to think about,” Sykes said of the song’s themes. “They tell us how to live with a smile on their face, like shit ain’t fucked up, inform us of tragic statistics like it’s nothing… it’s a weird world.”
Yungblud added that when he received the instrumentals for “Obey,” he was in Los Angeles at the time, watching and supporting the ongoing Black Lives Matter protests, which partially inspired the song’s themes.
“We are being told to conform to a completely outdated idea that we don’t relate to or even understand,” he said. “They teach us to turn against each other and to fight against our differences rather than embrace and celebrate them. They try to keep us divided because it makes us weaker. Robots follow robots, because they feel nothing at all. But what they don’t realize is that to us, to be different is to be free, and a world of fucking love and equality is a world we want to be part of. We will rise above the hate and the diversion. We will fight for the world we want to be a part of. We will not obey.”
From Rolling Stone US