Many were left impressed by the unflinching heaviness that Bring Me The Horizon were able to conjure with their first all-new deathcore track in ages last week. That song, “Dehumanized“, was unveiled via a provocative music video, and is scheduled to appear as a bonus track on the band’s forthcoming re-recorded version of their debut album, “Count Your Blessings“. That revisited version has been titled “Count Your Blessings | Repented” and will arrive next week on July 10th.
As it turns out, vocalist Oli Sykes had more than just his own legacy to live up to when it came time to deliver this tribute to the band’s heavier past. In an Instagram story shared around the time of that song’s debut last week, Sykes went into detail regarding what inspired him to pen the lyrics for that track.
Outside of drawing inspiration from the dystopian horror novel ‘Tender Is The Flesh‘, ‘Dehumanized” was also inspired by the criticisms Sykes has faced for his past activism for humanitarian causes. Sykes went on to claim that he and his bandmates were warned that their decision to have Palestinian flags waved onstage during their 2025 sets at the annual ‘Reading‘ and ‘Leeds‘ festivals could potentially end their career.
Sykes in part said about the song’s lyrical inspiration:
“This video was actually inspired by this book I’m reading rn called Tender Is The Flesh. It’s fucked, have a read if you can…
“[‘Dehumanized‘] was born from an event that happened last year. I was told that peacefully raising a flag on stage in recognition of a humanitarian catastrophe unfolding where children were being killed would most likely carry career ending consequences.
It made me realise how we are silently we’re conditioned to suppress our humanity. We think were are free, conscious beings, when in truth we are driven by forces we barely understand.
‘Some of us are butchers, some of us are lambs, sennd me to the abbatoir, let’s find out which I am,’ is the crux of this song.
The abbatoir is a metphor for being put in a place where my very livelihood is facing execution.
When empathy becomes an act [of] anarchy, then u discover whether your values are real.
I want this video to take that central theme to the worst imaginable conclusion.
A fully operational human slaughterhouse.
Let’s ask the viewer at what point does suffering become unacceptable to u?
At what point do you draw the line?
Every time we’re taught to look away or stay quiet, we live a little bit more of who we are.
So the slaughter house is analogy for modern civ.
On top of that many of the lyrics reference this kind of setting…”
Despite the potential cost to their career, last year saw Bring Me The Horizon take the risk and have Palestinian flags waved onstage alongside them at both ‘Reading‘ and ‘Leeds‘ festivals last year. You can see that in the below timestamped footage from their headlining performance at the annual ‘Reading‘ festival.
