Bring Me The Horizon’s ‘Summer of Becoming’ culminates in a triumphant headlining set in Brabham Park
Despite the grey, heavy skies that signal the start to the Sunday morning, just as the first bands are due to hit the various stages around the arena. The sun floods the site, soaking the field of tired
and hungover bodies in a welcome warmth. One glance around makes it obvious who today is really about, Bring Me The Horizon. Yorkshire has shown up in force, shirts and slogans everywhere, anticipation crackling long before Oli Sykes and company set foot on stage.
But first, it’s James And The Cold Gun opening up the Chevron stage, determined to prove they belong here. Their sound is raw, loud and unrelenting, guitars slicing through the sleepy haze as if to shake everyone fully awake. Tracks are hook-laden but delivered with grit, and the swaggering, scuzzy close Chewing Glass is the real knockout punch. Against all odds, it pulls a circle pit from a crowd still desperately clinging to coffee (or beer) and shaking off hangovers. It’s chaotic, messy, and exactly the kind of wake-up call a festival day needs.
Over on the main stage, South Arcade swagger in with a look straight out of the early 2000’s, spray paint tins scattered across the set as if the band raided a Blink-182 garage sale. But the illusion cracks the moment the music kicks in. Every chorus feels airbrushed, every hook padded out by a backing track so obvious it borders on parody. It’s a curious contradiction: a band desperate to embody a bygone era, yet propped up entirely by modern tech that never existed back when their heroes were actually doing it. Instead of raw rebellion, it feels like manufactured nostalgia, a glossy replica of something far rougher, louder and more authentic.
Say what you like about Enter Shikari, and plenty do, but one thing you can’t accuse them of is phoning it in. Rou Reynolds may have tipped over into full-time preacher mode, and the newer material struggles to match the fire of their early years, but by God, they try. The band hurl themselves across the stage like men possessed, desperate to shake a reserved crowd into life. It’s only with Sssnakepit and Anaesthetist that they finally get a couple of dust clouds swirling from the floor, a flicker of the chaos they thrive on. Still, it’s hard to take Reynolds’ sermonising on consumerism entirely seriously when he’s pacing the stage in the latest Carhartt drop and designer glasses, a contradiction as glaring as it is distracting. In the end, the loudest roar remains reserved for Sorry You’re Not a Winner, a bittersweet reminder that two decades on, their defining anthem still towers over the catalogue that followed.
In the hour Shikari spend straining for connection, Fred Durst and company manage more in under ten minutes. Limp Bizkit stroll onto the main stage to the unlikely sweetness of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Sweet Home Alabama before detonating into bedlam. Durst prowls slowly, almost lazily, across the stage, surveying his flock with the air of a man utterly in control. Every word, every gesture is delivered in that bizarrely soothing yet provocative tone, inciting carnage with a kind of twisted affection. The irony is striking: for a crowd so young, it’s Bizkit, not Shikari, who appears to strike the deepest chord. My Generation, My Way, Rollin’, Nookie, all fired out in quick succession, each met with deafening approval. They are, against all odds, the perfect warm-up act: chaotic, unifying, and exactly the spark Leeds needs before the main event. They close out the set with a second running of Break Stuff offering the crowd one final, gleeful
chance to lose their minds, which they take with both hands.
And then, finally, it’s time. An entire day building to this moment. So much so that when Bring Me The Horizon do hit the stage, the atmosphere shifts from restless anticipation to absolute frenzy. The band emerges to a wall of screams, silhouettes framed against blinding strobes as DArkSide tears the night open. From the first note, it’s clear that this is no longer just a festival headline set, it’s theatre, ritual, and sermon all rolled into one.
Bring Me The Horizon deserve an obscene amount of credit for the sheer quality of show they put on. Pyro erupts, confetti cannons burst, and the screens beam a dizzying mix of dystopia and digital chaos, with fabulous references to mid 90’s gaming classics. The band lean heavily on their newer material, which lands with crushing weight, but it’s the older anthems, Shadow Moses and Can You Feel My Heart that truly send the crowd into orbit. Kingslayer goes down an absolute storm and Sykes controls the masses with the ease of a cult leader, beckoning circle pits, demanding singalongs, and covers every single piece of the stage.
By the time the closing strains of Throne fade into the night, Leeds is left in tatters, breathless, euphoric, cloud dust billowing above their heads, and united in the knowledge they’ve just witnessed a band at the absolute peak of their powers. On a festival day packed with nostalgia, throwbacks, and contradictions, it’s Bring Me The Horizon who stand tall as both the future and the now.
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