Oli Sykes Interviewed By Nik Nocturnal!

Nik said: "If you scroll through Instagram, TikTok, they're just bedroom kids screaming. Somehow everyone knows how to do false cords and the zombie noises."

Oli interjected: "Yeah, yeah, and everyone's got this kind of like, like it's funny like the technique of screaming. Not that there's no technique to screaming, but like, that wasn't something I would think about before, you know, I would just like, yeah. Just want to scream. Like it was just screaming. I never thought about like I might damage my voice or anything like that. And sometimes I'll see someone going 'you want to scream like Oli Sykes? This is how I do it" and I watch it and I'm like "is it'? Cause I don't know that. Like that's, I have no idea how I do that. I never think about it. Do you know what I mean"?

I know what he means; I speak English quite well, but I can't say I understand his mentality. Just as if I were going to be a public speaker or an orator, I'd want to learn how to speak without jamming "like" into every sentence. I'd want to try to eliminate saying "um."

I know why people do it. They're using that time to think about what they are going to suppose for example, if I were asked: "How do you sing"?

Hopefully I wouldn't start like this: "Uh, well, it's like, I mean, when I sing, like I have to relax...."

Hopefully, I'd start more like this: "You want to know how I sing? I'll tell you exactly how I sing [that bought me a whole lot more time to think about what I'm going to say than the former example]. The first thing about it is I need to relax. Why would I relax? [I know why I'd relax but by asking that rhetorical question, I've given myself more time to decide how to explain it.] I relax so it will sound good and so I don't get hurt. That means I'm doing some stretches. before I start. I want all the muscles in my neck to be ready for it. I don't want them tight. I want them to be supple and flexible so I don't get hurt and so singing will be a little closer to effortless because ideally, singing should be almost effortless.

Sometimes you see a guy like Phil Anselmo or an intense singer with the veins in his neck bulging and you might wonder how he's not hurting himself. Well, you have to make the discernment between intensity and tension. You want to be intense, but you don't want to be tense! I might look like I'm straining to sing a part, but that's peformative; its for the benefit of the audience. It's not as hard to sing as I'm making it look. I'm showing emotion. That might have nothing to do with how hard it is to sing a part; it may be about the lyrics I'm singing and what they mean to me."

I can't imagine not wanting to know how I do what I do. Especially at the professional level, how would you not take precautions to not damage your voice? Can you picture Usain Bolt at the Olympics and foregoing a stretching routine because this time he's just "gonna go with his gut"?

No! You would never leave so much to chance, especially in this day and age when we have exponentially more information at our fingertips than we could have imagined thirty years ago.

We have a singing community here and sometimes it seems like the same six or seven people carry most of the conversation and the other 200+, I really don't know if they read the posts or not. I imagine many do, but that 90% at least never post or even comment seems a bit unusual, but I suppose the Pareto Principle applies. It maintains that most things in life are not distributed evenly. A vital few inputs generally drive the vast majority of outputs. It estimates that 80% of results come from 20% of efforts or 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes. Maybe 80% of content comes from 20% of community members on most internet forums and platforms. It seems reasonable.

That Oli Sykes has so little interest in how he uses and cares for his moneymaker - his throat, that it's kind of hard to understand how someone could take that approach.

I don't expect to ever make money from singing but I'm already taking it more seriously than he does in the sense that In do want to know how I do what I do because it's fascinating and because if I understand how I do what i do, then I can potentially refine it and make my technique better. I want to know what I'm doing so that hopefully I don't get hurt and have to take a lot of time off from my favorite thing to do.

I think Bring Me The Horizon has written some very good songs. I think they're one of the best of the newer bands. Oli Sykes is one of the best at that style but as for who I think is the very best frontman right now in metalcore? That's Noah Sebastian. He's got a beautiful voice.

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