The days of Bury Tomorrow being plucky underdogs making a decent fist of helping to put British metalcore on the map are long gone. The streaming numbers, venues they headline and reaction to both 2018’s Black Flame and 2020’s Cannibal albums indicate a band on the verge of following their peers with their big commercial breakthrough.
So, it’s with this context that we find their seventh album, The Seventh Sun – a record that could be Bury Tomorrow’s definitive statement, and a bold attempt to upscale up into the territories inhabited by BMTH and Architects. But if that is their goal, then it might not necessarily be realised this time out.
That’s not due to a lack of quality, but more because, where everyone else went a bit more toward the mainstream, BT are still way too heavy. Vocalist Dani Winter-Bates’s roar has become their most brutally potent weapon, and a song like Wrath, for all its bombastic strings and modern sheen, is dominated by his sandpaper-stripping voice. This is a good thing, by the way.
Although The Seventh Sun accentuates the nuanced electronic pulses, delicate, atmospheric ambience and full-blown pop hooks that Bury Tomorrow have toyed with in their prior work – Majesty has ‘O2 Arena set-closer’ written all over it – songs like Care, with its gruesome groove riff, and Forced Divide, where Dani actually does a pretty good George ‘Corpsegrinder’ Fisher impersonation, would make daytime radio listeners absolutely shit themselves.
The easy career path for Bury Tomorrow would be to pander to the rock audience. Their popularity may still surge off the back of The Seventh Sun, but that they’ve arguably got even heavier says everything about their attitude and commitment to making the music they love.
The Seventh Sun is due March 31 via Music For Nations. The world exclusive Bury Tomorrow bundle is on-sale now.
