UK Rock Was Bigger Than Pop This Year, so Why Is It Still Being Treated as Niche?

Earlier this month I was watching a band telling 12,500 people to "fuck someone in the eye!". They were headlining Wembley Arena, the same venue that next year is holding gigs for Maroon 5 and Queen. They were Bring Me The Horizon and the gig was sold out.

It wasn’t so long ago that they were the ones getting fucked in the eye - by all manner of human excrement, woodchips and bottles. Their debut album was deathcore white noise. They were the most hated band in rock, turned on after singer Oli Sykes reportedly pissed on a girl who turned him down on a tour bus and then wrote a song about it. Only last year, guitarist Lee Malia said: “We’ll never sell out arenas.” And how could they? They’re a metalcore band with songs with names like "Tell Slater Not To Wash His Dick" and “Fuck”.

Yet somehow they sold out Wembley. To put that gig into perspective, there hasn’t been a UK metal band to take on big arenas since the new wave of British heavy metal in the 80s. The genre has always had a turbulent relationship with mainstream audiences. In recent years, it's fared better with kids than adults, and the bands that have done well on a wider scale have been American. But this year metal became less of a specialist genre and more of a mainstream one.

You’ll have seen the signs of rock creeping into the peripheries of popular culture. Take the mediocre daytime TV programme, Sunday Brunch. In 2013, their musical guests included Little Mix, James Arthur and Katie Melua. In 2014 they included You Me At Six, Blitz Kids, Twin Atlantic and Lower Than Atlantis. The Made In Chelsea music team followed suit so now Deaf Havana, Allusondrugs and Lonely The Brave now soundtrack coiffured arseholes chirpsing one another on pavement in Belgravia.

Other scattered signs of widespread acceptance have come from Radio 1’s drip-feeding of rock. Right now Bring Me The Horizon, Lower Than Atlantis, Marmozets, Royal Blood, Of Mice and Men and Enter Shikari are all on the playlist, which means they get regular spins on the station's biggest shows. Then this summer, the station acknowledged the public’s growing interest in rock and moved the Rock show with Dan P Carter from its graveyard post-midnight slot to three hours on a Sunday evening. This prime time slot for rock meant BBC Radio clearly no longer considered it the highly specialist programming it was last year.

Against the grain of recent years, major labels noticeably spent the tail end of 2013 and the year of 2014 signing these British rock acts. Bring Me The Horizon were signed to Sony for Sempiternal, Young Guns signed to Virgin EMI in February, Lower Than Atlantis (listen below) moved to Sony in April, and Marmozets signed to a Warner imprint. Search & Destroy, the rock label launched by Raw Power Management, whose roster includes Mallory Knox, Crossfaith and While She Sleeps, allied with music giants Universal back in October too, which will no doubt help nurture and push more rock through mainstream channels. Labels have predicted this shift and have been choosing to spend time and money on these bands. They wouldn’t be doing it if they didn’t think the public would reciprocate their commitment.

If you want an example of the coming together of label, radio and mainstream public interests, look no further than the behemoth of 2014 that is Royal Blood. Their album debuted number 1 in the UK and was nominated for the Mercury Prize. They sold 66,000 albums in the first week, with mums rocking it on their commute, and old Rod Stewart-loving dads hitting Tesco for the hard copy. Find them beige as one might, they were massive for rock in 2014.

With this sort of rising interest, however, comes the age-old issue that all genres have gone through, from hip-hop to R&B: how commercial can you make your music without losing the key components of what makes it work? This is something that many of these British bands have tussled with this year; noticeably smoothing their edges for radio and stadium. On “Number One”, Mike from Lower Than Atlantis’ Mike sings, “I’m not giving up until I’m number one.” Young Guns similarly moved towards a more dance/indie style in their new single "I Want Out" (listen below) while You Me At Six – who also played Wembley Arena earlier this year – released a poppier stadium-rock album than their previous releases (which landed them their first number one on the UK Album Charts). Obviously, for those who loved their heavier work up until this point, this is a disappointment. But these moves appear to be paying off, as each of these bands dance around the outskirts of extreme mainstream success.

No one has done this better than Bring Me The Horizon. Their album last year, Sempiternal, kept their metalcore but introduced melodies that twist around your spine. It was the perfect accessible rock album, and probably the best-charting album written about Ketamine addiction ever. They took these ambitions a step further on their latest tracks, "Drown" - specifically written for Wembley. It got a mixed reaction when it came out - it’s not as heavy as their usual stuff. I was disappointed when it was released, but when I was watching them play it in an arena it made me imagine them – and other bands of their ilk – playing to bigger stadiums than this in the near future.

Rock bands fared a lot better this year than many of the other acts tipped by the music press. If you look at the BBC Sound Of List longlist for the year, besides Sam Smith, George Ezra and Royal Blood there were no acts that really rode the wave of hype into some sort of wider success. Chloe Howl, Ella Eyre, FKA Twigs, Sampha: none of these artists sold any considerable number of albums or tickets in 2012. Even huge stars like Ariana Grande or Nicki Minaj will have sold a fraction of the number of records that big UK rock groups did this year.

So what are the chances we're going to see Lower Than Atlantis, Of Mice & Men and Bring Me The Horizon nominated at the Brits this year? Or on Graham Norton? Or at Glastonbury? Right now it doesn't seem likely. For years UK rock has been the music industry's bastard son - now it's gone and got itself the musical equivalent of a degree from Oxford and nice career in dentistry and still its parents don't want anything to do with it.

That has to change in 2015. Not least because I want to watch Oli Sykes tell Glastonbury crowds to fuck each other in the eye.

You can follow Hannah on Twitter: @hannahrosewens