Bring Me The horizon
As the hottest draw in British metal return with sixth album Amo, guitarist Lee Malia tells us about conquering the planet and falling for the Marshall sound
Since 1962, Marshall has been the amp choice of the guitar gods. But while we’ll never tire of the crunch and sneer of Marshall-powered classics like Back In Black and Appetite For Destruction, the British brand is the sound of here and now, providing the guts behind modern rock’s most exciting new albums.
Bursting out of the Sheffield rock scene with 2006’s debut album Count Your Blessings, Bring Me The Horizon have shaken the planet with their heartfelt, hooky and seismically heavy brand of metal. And while this year’s charttopping sixth album Amo advances their savage early sound with flavours of pop-rock and electronica, guitarist Lee Malia tells us he can always rely on his JCM800 and JTM-45 to deliver the goods.
What’s it like being in Bring Me The Horizon right now? “It’s all been pretty crazy. We got to UK#1 with Amo, which I don’t think any of us ever expected. You know, 10 years ago, we never thought we’d be top of the pop chart, making that kind of music. We never expected the Grammy nomination for Mantra, either. Even though we didn’t win, it’s still a wild thing to happen. Everything’s just going really well for us at the moment.” To take you back to the start, how did you first get involved with Marshall? “The way it happened was quite random. I used to have amps made by another company. I had two heads and I’d run two cabs, mix them together and stuff. But then we went on tour with Every Time I Die and both their guitarists used JCM800s – and they just sounded massive on stage. They were only using one head, and I was just like, ‘How does it sound so good?’
“Just after that tour, we went to play in South America. While we were over there, we were just using loan gear. We gave them a list of what amps we wanted, and they didn’t have any of the amps I normally used, but they were like, ‘We’ve got some Marshalls’. So I ended up using an 800 out there, and I’ve been on them ever since. After that, I was like, ‘I’ve got to change all my amps now’.
“There’s just something different about the 800. The amount of power you feel from them on stage is so good. I fell in love with them from there.” What did you like about that classic JCM800 tone? “The 800 was just a totally different thing to what I’d been playing on before. You can’t hide behind it. There’s not too much gain, so it doesn’t cover up your mistakes, and it’s so clear and transparent – I really liked that. You could hear the picking a lot more, and it was a lot more articulate than what I’d been using. I just loved that.
“And the presence of the amp, too: it had so much attack. To me, there’s just something about valves that’s different to a digital amp. I have no idea what it is.” The story goes that your dad was a huge Marshall fan… “Yeah. He’s always loved classic rock and stuff, so when I was younger, for my first real amp, he got me a Marshall MG – it was like a proper head and cab, but just a bit smaller. It was a solid-state amp or whatever, but I still thought it was amazing. I remember him getting me that and I was thinking, ‘Oh, this is insane’.
Even when our band first started out, we had no money for quite a while, and for the first year or so, I was using that MG head. So I suppose I started with Marshall, and then I ended up back on them.”
Were you aware of Marshall’s heritage and legendary endorsers? “Yeah, definitely. I used to watch the Monsters Of Rock festival with my dad, and there were always walls of Marshalls