Sykes has said how both Fish, lead guitarist Lee Malia and himself would spend days writing in his own home. The band announced on their Facebook and Twitter pages that their third single would be " Go to Hell, for Heaven's Sake" and would officially release the song as a single on 10 June.

On 3 November 2012, the band invited fans and the Drop Dead Clothing team to enter Angelic Studios to record the gang vocals for Sempiternal.The album's lyrics are also focused on self-reflective themes of analysing the consequences of someone's actions on people's lives and transforming them into apologies [36] and described as having "a more considerate, contemplative and self-aware demeanour". It was also the perfect nod to their metal and post-hardcore roots; but with a fresh genre defining approach. Sykes said he admires Date's production work shown on White Pony and Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water. This record brought our band closer than ever and for that it will always have a special place in my heart.

In 2011, Bring Me the Horizon were finishing up the tour that was held in support of the band's previous album There Is a Hell Believe Me I've Seen It.The introductory song "Can You Feel My Heart" was a musical experiment which helped sculpt the style of Sempiternal. Previous examples of where they've written was Arboga, Sweden for Suicide Season [10] and rural Scotland for There Is a Hell. It took us so long to get into the writing process this time because we had that massive tour, and we hadn't written for so long. Band frontman Oli Sykes adds “I feel like this is the album that changed everything for our band, both in commercial success terms and personal terms. on the US Billboard 200 with 27,522 first week sales, making Sempiternal the band's highest charting album in America until That's the Spirit debuted at No.

Although the band had previously worked with other artists (like Canadian synthpop artist Lights) [18] the band decided against introducing guest, except for members of post-rock band Immanu El who did backing vocals across the album. The House of Wolves" is a song about Sykes dealing with pressures to become religious to help overcome personal problems. Sykes explained that while There Is a Hell examined mannerisms such as dealing with great amounts of depression, Sempiternal examines learning how to deal with that stress. The song's looped vocal pattern was created by Fish as Sykes couldn't think of lyrics that fit in the chorus, but they then became a significant part of the song's structure.

The album has been cited as metalcore, [28] [29] post-hardcore, [29] [30] alternative rock, [31] electronicore, [32] hard rock, [33] and alternative metal, [34] and has been cited as having a more " pop rock sound" while having a "metalcore edge".

Describing the album as blending pieces of their previous three albums and then creating "a whole new sound" Sykes summarises the album as having been "massively" influenced by various electronic music genres. By the middle of September it was announced that Terry Date, who is known for his work with bands like Deftones, Limp Bizkit and Pantera would be the album's producer. On 4 March 2013, the band released the second music video from Sempiternal which was " Sleepwalking" on YouTube via the band's Vevo channel and Epitaph Record's channel.The song was the first song which Fish "really got his teeth into" which is shown in the heavy use of electronica. Although the band's split from Visible Noise wasn't strictly aggressive, the band wanted to join a major record label due to the lack of resources and support an independent label could offer during the album's development and promotion. At Metacritic, which assigns a normalised rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream music critics, the album received an average score of 81, based on 12 reviews, which indicates "universal acclaim". It is the first album to feature former Worship keyboardist Jordan Fish and the first with guitarist Lee Malia playing both lead and rhythm components.