It's a special Thursday evening for the French scene. No more, no less.

It's Thursday night, it feels like summer outside and I am about to watch two bands I adore in an arena in my hometown. Even almost a month after it happened, it doesn't sound like something that has been a thing in real life. The power of great, truly great moments, I suppose.

Opening the evening are Bedford boys Don Broco. Playing in mainland Europe isn't something they do on a regular basis - they have played France only once before that, in 2012, as a support for Young Guns (back when Young Guns actually found their way to France, but I digress). Despite their relative absence from our shores, they have a fair amount of fans among the 7000 strong crowd in front of them, as show the singalongs during the likes of You Wanna Know, or the number of boys throwing themselves on the floor for the classic Thug Workout push-ups.

Whether it is their own crowd at home or Bring Me The Horizon's audience in a different country, Don Broco easily win people over thanks to their incredible charisma, frontman Rob Damiani's approximative (but adorable) attempt at French and their sunny, catchy tunes everyone seems to like. Their fanbase has surely gained a good number of members during their short run with Bring Me The Horizon, and it is fully deserved. They were, as always, energetic and charismatic, on stage to kill and convince, capable of making seven thousand people start a wall of death and proving they have the resoruces to get to the top everywhere. 

(PS : the aforementioned wall of death left me with bruises all over my legs. One day, I'll learn. Or not)

Half an hour of Pvris being played later, the lights are turned off and it is Bring Me The Horizon's turn to take the Parisian stage. What a way to the top it has been for them, and what a story it has been between the Sheffield natives and myself. I used to be among the people who did not like them, did not get them, got scared when Oli would scream and then, There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It, There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret happened and it changed everything.

My brother, a big Bring Me The Horizon fan himself, had bought us tickets before I moved to Brighton, and I knew there was no chance I would miss out. Come hell or high water, I was going to be there, singing along to songs mostly extracted from Sempiternal and the band's latest record, 2015's That's The Spirit.

When you see them on stage in general, it is obvious they are aiming for the very top. Yet it becomes even more special when they headline (and pretty much sell out) an arena in France (a country which still carries the reputation of being a tough crowd). There and then, when 7000 chant "S-P-I-R-I-T" or "This is sempiternal" (respectively from Happy Song and Shadow Moses, two of the outfit's staple live tracks), it is clear Bring Me The Horizon are going to become the biggest band in the world, whether we like it or not. It just is going to happen. They go from strength to strength and that arena show, well, it was a strong one to say the least.

The setlist is composed of big track after big tracks, songs you could easily imagine played in a stadium or at a festival with fireworks exploding into the darkened sky. Every intro sets fire to the ecstatic crowd and screams and roars of approval can be heard all over the place.

On stage, the band seems to know how special the evening is, what it actually means. They look and sound like a strong unit, with Oli Sykes as the über-charismatic conductor and every instrument sounding bolder and better than ever. (In passing, I have always been a big Matt Nicholls fan, so here's all my appreciation for him, his talent and whoever had the idea to put his drumkit on a pedestal. Thank you). They don't sound like a band who is ready to do big things, they sound like a band who is in the process of taking over the world, one country at a time.

What a long way it has been for the band who played that very venue with the likes of Machine Head and got booed by the ever so difficult French crowd. It is the most pleasing thing in the world to watch. Contrary to all the naysaying voices, I, for one, believe they deserve their spot under the sun. They have successfully reinvented themselves, from a tiny deathcore band from Sheffield to the leading force in our scene, not afraid of changing their sound and exploring new directions. They are not up there at the top by chance. It has taken a lot of hard work and guts, and I deeply admire that.

Paris is the toughest of crowds and they have owned it like barely anyone ever has. You don't get there by chance.

Whatever the future holds for Bring Me The Horizon, it will happen at the top and nowhere else, with those bright lights and stadium anthems, with their dedicated fanbase and me crying on my brother's shoulder during Drown, which hit home harder than it ever had, with fireworks and confetti and pyro and all the love I can find in my little, emo heart.