Bury Tomorrow

author JWM date 05/10/13

As sound proof as this green room may be the musicians that fill it up are the exact opposite of quiet. It's the first date of Bury Tomorrow's first tour of the UK for three years and I am sat here with Daniel Winter-Bates, both lead vocalist and front man of this melodic metalcore revival outfit. He sits awkward as he plays with the cuffs of his jeans and perhaps even weary from continuous array of press he's had to tediously answer the same questions to.

RF.net: So this is your first headline tour in Britain in support of "The Union Of Crowns", correct?
Daniel: Yeah it's the first one we've done, and it's the first one we've done in three years.

RF.net: It seems for the support of "The Union Of Crowns" you've put an almost exclusive focus on Europe. Was this to cement your own fanbase in this continent before returning to the United States?
Daniel: Yeah, we released it in the states, and it did quite well, it got into the Billboard charts. Yeah it was released worldwide but we've just been able to tour the UK and Europe off the back of this album. Every fanbase has their positive and negatives and Europe's always had a great fanbase for us, especially when "The Union of Crowns" came out, it really helped us, especially in the UK.

RF.net: The band's you've selected for the tour really showcase good talent from the British underground scene. What compelled you to invite each band?
Daniel: I think it was a common mindset between all of the guys and our management at the time and all the bands are killing it in their genres. You know they're all doing great, we've known the guys in Heart In Hand and the guys in Feed The Rhino for so long now that we think its long past due that we toured together. Empress, obviously, are killing it at the moment with all those big tours. So it was kind of a no-brainier really.

RF.net: What is your typical role within the band's songwritting and creative process?
Daniel: I write most of the lyrics, I come up with all the themes and concepts because I really like lyric writing, it's a big deal to me. But everyone has got their own input with everything, if there is this quiet moment where i can sit down and be like "I want this song to have this kind of feel". Or with the guitar writing, they could turn round and say "I like that little bit vocal wise". We're a very hands on band really, we like to mix it up a lot and give our own input.

RF.net: In a previous interview with Rockfreaks.net in 2011 you said that your second album was to feature elements of Euro trance and Grunge. And from what I've read from other interviews your American label, Artery Recordings, was encouraging you to become more electronic focused. At the time of the interview was this a more sincere comment than we anticipated?
Daniel: That was definitely sincere, the Artery comments. It's not specifically a bad thing but they were looking for us to go a certain style and we didn't have the same mind set. We've grown up a lot now and we understand that, we were very young when we were on Artery, as a band anyway. We have realised what we want to be, we've found our sound and our style and we have found where we want to be in the future. We just disagreed with them on what they wanted to do, you know? It's not necessarily a bad thing. Because they helped a lot of bands other there kill it, they've had bands like Attack Attack! Memphis May Fire, A Day To Remember, all these bands were on Artery.

RF.net: So I heard you are going to record your third album in October, where are you going to record it?
Daniel: We're recording it with Mike Curtis who will be tracking it in the UK. Then it's going off to Will Putney in the US who will mix and master it.

RF.net: Will it sound like your previous work?
Daniel: We've obviously got a new guitarist, well he's our newest member. It's going to be a lot faster and quite heavy. It calling back to the days of old-school metalcore more like when Killswitch [Engage] first came out and when Still Remains were out. It sounds a lot more like that but with a new, modern feel so it's kind of like new metalcore. We've always been proud of being metalcore and we will always keep being it. We want to go as far back with that as we possibly can.

RF.net: What kind of time do you want to release it for?
Daniel: There is a hundred different reasons as to why an album will come out at a certain time. Personally I'd like to see it out the first quarter of next year so anything from January up till April. But you never know in this day and age.

RF.net: Do you think you'll concentrate on touring in other than Europe for it's promotion?
Daniel: That's our mission; to get as far around the world as we possibly can. We want to play to as many people like us as we possible can, whether that's 20 people in Australia or 200 people, where ever.

RF.net: Songs on "The Union Of Crowns" such as "1604" and "A Curse" weren't as typical for your style. Do you think you'll experiment with different structures and ideas on this album?
Daniel: We don't try to stray too much from what we play. We play live all the songs we've written, apart from "Relief", because it's acoustic, bit gay. But you know, we try to still do a very formal format approach to songwriting. Obviously there will be little bits where we like to push each other, like Jason might sing more or I might sing on a song.

RF.net: What were yours and Jason's vocal inspirations?
Daniel: Jason was actually massively inspired by Brandon Boyd from Incubus, so he used to sing note-for-note when he was younger. We tried to sing along to Incubus songs which was great, and Justin Timberlake he really likes. But I've got millions. When I was growing up Brandon from Bleeding Through was my favourite singer of all times. That band Textures, Karl Schubach from Misery Signals was one of my favourite vocalists. From more modern examples, Winston [McCall] from Parkway Drive. Just vocalists who take care of themselves and vocalists that understand what they're doing, I really appreciate.

Lyrically, bands like La Dispute and Touché Amoré. I love those bands, because it's much higher thinking being in a band like that. But it's just a little bit too far for us to go. And then people like Schuylar [Croom] from He Is Legend.[/iview-a]

RF.net: For "The Union of Crowns" you went into a lot of medieval lyrical concepts. I suppose it may not be the same conceptual levels as La Dispute but it's very interesting.
Daniel: Yeah, that's what we're all about. We're all about making people think, maybe it relates to something I didn't think of when I wrote the lyrics but that's a great talking point.

RF.net: Do you feel the member's influences have changed over your careers?
Daniel: As a band we're very metalcore based, I mean we love our metalcore but the bands that have influenced us are the ones we've toured with. It's because when you're on the road with someone you see how they work and how they tick. Like bands like Attack Attack! were killing it and we toured with that band. We went in with preconceptions thinking "the music wasn't really our thing" and we went out there and they were the best people I have ever met and they really showed us how to be a professional band and we weren't a professional band before we went to the United States. And we came back as a professional band which was amazing.

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