Did Bring Me the Horizon lift a Deftones riff for their latest track?

Deftones have plenty of fans across the music world, but it seems Bring Me the Horizon may have taken their love for the alt-metal act a bit too far.

The British band released a new EP, Post Human: Survival Horror, on October 30, and listeners have taken notice of the fact that one of the electric guitar riffs in lead-off track Dear Diary bears a striking resemblance to the Deftones’ 2012 song Swerve City.

You can compare the two tracks above and below – for the offending riff in question, head to roughly 2:10 in Dear Diary, which is otherwise an absolute thrasher of a track, with some furious lead work from Lee Malia.

This, of course, is not the first time BMTH have been accused of riff pilfering. The band was previously accused of stealing from Evanescence for the song Nihilist Blues from their 2019 album, Amo.

BMTH frontman Oli Sykes told NME about the incident, “The weird thing about Evanescence is that we got sued by them on our last record. On Nihilist Blues, we ripped off one of their verses. It was subconscious, but when it happened we were like, ‘We’re not even going to argue.’”

That appears to have all been smoothed over, as Evanescence frontwoman Amy Lee makes an appearance on another Post Human track, One Day the Only Butterflies Left Will Be in Your Chest as You March Towards Your Death.

Perhaps we can look forward to Stef Carpenter and his ESP nine-string dropping by for a BMTH collab in the future…