Bring Me The Horizon joined Ed Sheeran onstage at the BRITS and the internet was not ready

Ed Sheeran and Oli Sykes onstage at the BRITS (Image credit: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

This year's Brit Awards ceremony has taken place at the O2 Arena in London, and the opening performance has certainly ruffled the internet's feathers.

The main show was kicked off by your mum's favourite pop star Ed Sheeran, who was joined onstage by alt.metal's very own Bring Me The Horizon and a troupe of enthusiastic dancers for a pop/metal mash-up of Sheeran's enormo-hit Bad Habits.

The internet, it must be said, did not appear to be fully prepared for this historic coupling, and while the crowd at the O2 greeted the unlikely merger with unfettered hysteria, the prevailing mood on Twitter was one of bafflement.

"Was that a glitch in the matrix?", asked one confused viewer. Another wrote, "When I was 15 I joined a screamo band and it very much had the same confusing vibes as Ed Sheeran and BMTH". Meanwhile, a third witness complained, "That Ed Sheeran performing Bad Habits with BMTH at the brits is quite frankly one of the worst things I’ve ever heard. Feel sick."

The epoch-defining performance can be witnessed below.

The Sheeran/BMTH collaboration is the latest in a long line of unlikely BRITs partnerships, ranging from 1998's bewildering conjunction of lightweight Scottish rockers Texas with Wu-Tang Clan member Method Man, and the 1992 union between dance music mavericks The KLF and crust veterans Extreme Noise Terror.

Adele was the big winner at this year's ceremony, walking away with the prizes for Best Album, Best Single and Artist Of The Year, while the Best British Group award went to Wolf Alice and Sam Fender collected the Best Rock/Alternative bauble.

Last month Bring Me The Horizon released an instrumental cover of Moon Over The Castle, the theme from PlayStation game Gran Turismo. It's taken from the soundtrack to Gran Turismo 7, which is released on March 4.

Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazine since 2014. 40 years in music industry, online for 27. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.