Bring Me The Horizon released Suicide Season on CD in the United States through Epitaph on November 18, 2008. Their second studio album followed Count Your Blessings, the 2006 debut that established their deathcore beginnings. The Sheffield band were moving toward metalcore and making room for electronic elements, with a growing appetite for ideas beyond the approach that had introduced them.
“Chelsea Smile” put that curiosity into practice. Oli Sykes told Coup de Main that he had become friends with The Secret Handshake’s Luis Dubuc through his clothing company’s sponsorship of the musician. Sykes already liked Dubuc’s work, and when Bring Me The Horizon wanted to incorporate synth samples, they asked him to contribute. Dubuc recorded material and sent it over. The collaboration added another ingredient to a song with a personal subject: Sykes explained that its lyrics grew out of a period when he could appear happy while feeling otherwise. The song connected the band’s expanding musical interests with something he’d struggled to show people.
That desire for something fresh had shaped the writing from the start. In a 2008 email interview published by The Music, bassist Matt Kean explained that the band needed material they could feel excited about playing for another two years. Repeating their debut held little appeal. They had less writing time than they’d had for Count Your Blessings, but were more receptive to new ideas and worked on songs throughout the day. Kean described a group that agreed on the direction, even as the deadline put pressure on them.
The recording environment helped them concentrate. They worked with producer Fredrik Nordström at Studio Fredman in Sweden and lived at the studio. Sykes told Kerrang! in 2008 that recording their debut in central Birmingham had left them easily distracted; the isolation in Sweden gave them fewer reasons to leave the music behind. Nordström also showed them how to operate the recording equipment, allowing sessions to continue after he went home. Kean drew a useful distinction about the producer’s contribution: the songs were already written, and the band remained protective of the arrangements. Nordström helped them develop the sound and add effects, giving those completed compositions more possibilities in the studio.
The experiments continued after the album’s release. In 2009, Suicide Season: Cut Up! arrived in the UK, handing the songs to other musicians and producers for remixes. Sykes told Rock Sound that the project began when he asked a friend who made electronic music to reinterpret one song. The result encouraged him to pursue versions of the entire record. With their label and managers supporting the idea, the band drew up a list of collaborators and began contacting them. The finished collection ranged across dubstep, hip-hop, electro and drum and bass, extending the interest in electronic music already present in “Chelsea Smile.”
Sykes returned to the importance of that change in a 2022 Kerrang! interview. He described Suicide Season as a deliberate effort to discover what harder work and a different musical approach could accomplish after the debut. The result changed the band’s expectations of themselves: “it paid off so well that it was what we had to do every time.”
