Bury Tomorrow‘s Dani Winter-Bates guides us through the creation of the band’s latest release, ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’, set for release on May 16 via Music For Nations.
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20 years into Bury Tomorrow’s career, and Dani Winter-Bates finally feels like they are being viewed as genuine contenders.
That’s not to say that the journey up until now hasn’t been an unbelievable success. From the pubs and clubs of Southampton to becoming one of the most renowned, celebrated and consistent assets in British metalcore, the band have crafted a story that many on this isle can only dream of. But something has felt different as they have unveiled more of their 8th full-length album ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’. Something bigger is taking place, and more heads have been turning to face them than ever before.
“You always err on the side of caution with most things you do when it comes to getting your hopes up,” he admits. “You just go with the flow and focus on the positives where possible, which we have always tried to do. But with this record, we have seen people talk about this body of work as their potential album of the year, which is really cool.
“We have loyal fans who have been there since day dot and will be there till day’s end and support us, and we will do everything we can to support them as well. But it’s the converted, the ones who may not have been on board previously or those who may not have even heard of us, giving us a chance that has been really awesome about releasing these songs.”
It feels almost serendipitous that such fevered excitement surrounds a record where the shackles have been thrown off in such a noticeable manner. Because ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’ exhibits so many elements that would not have left the cutting room floor in years before. It is the most intimate and intricate collection of bruising, beautiful and boundless tracks to which Bury Tomorrow has ever committed their name; a testament to breaking away from the way things used to be as much as a flickering light in the endless dark. A victorious rally call for those feeling lost in the here and now and a masterclass in harnessing heaviness.
To peel back the layers even more on the creation of this latest milestone, Rock Sound sat down with Dani and dived into what it means to use the present to your power.
THE SOUND
Consistency is a word that has followed Bury Tomorrow throughout their career. Their discography is chock-full of the sort of bludgeoning and sprawling offerings that many a band spend years trying to master. Yet what happens when your creative process becomes a safety net? What do you do when all you have ever known suddenly isn’t enough?
“I feel like we fell into a trap sonically in the sense of us being the same,” Dani admits, reviewing the band’s output. “We’re very lucky that we have had a few moments of resurgence where I feel like we have made special records, but if we had released another [2020’s] ‘Cannibal’, it would have been the end of our career. I know it for a fact. I love that album for many reasons, partly because of the personal connection, but I don’t think it would have been good enough to hold up three more times.”
The first inklings of moving away from those home comforts that had carried them for so long arrived with the addition of guitarist Ed Hartwell and vocalist Tom Prendergast back in 2022, materialising into 2023’s expansive and redefining full-length ‘The Seventh Sun’. Whereas that process felt transitional for all, figuring out how this new dynamic would work, the intent around the writing of ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’ was to drill even deeper into the wealth of talent now at their disposal. This resulted in a process that was as intimate as it was intricate, no idea posed taken off the table and no take in the studio left unscrutinised. And that made for the sort of songs that would never have been possible in the past. For every debauched outburst, found in the folds of the devilish ‘Villain Arc’ and caustic ‘Yōkai’, there is a vulnerable change of pace, like with the sensational stirring prog of ‘Paradox’ or melodically spine-tingling ‘Silence Isn’t Helping Us’. Delivering the rough as much as the smooth, keeping everything in perfect balance. With two new songwriters firmly in the mix rather than just finding their footing, the potential for what a Bury Tomorrow song could be has never been more vast. And for Dani, that’s an exciting position to be in.
“We have always been a band who have wanted to push ourselves, and that is much easier and more fun now. I love the fact that we enjoy it as much as we do, and no idea is a bad idea. When you get to the end of a process like that, you feel like you haven’t phoned it in. There’s no single way that any of these songs could enter the realm of not being gone over enough.”
That’s an understatement to say the least. Take the chorus that holds the stunningly affecting ‘Let Go’ together. Dani admits that a grand total of 20 variations were applied to it, the finished product featuring three different recordings across its runtime. He may laugh and jokingly call that “Disgraceful” now, but when he considers how he used to come in and record all of the vocals for an album in one go across a maximum of five days and be done with it, tracing over the same parts again and again actually feels pleasurable. In being so meticulous, he feels more connected to his band’s music than ever before, and who really gets to say that on your 8th album?
“You want that frustration that comes with making music. I don’t want to leave feeling like it was all super easy. That would be weird, and that’s what ‘Cannibal’ was. The subject matter was hard, but I did the vocals in three days. Being meticulous is vital for any band, I feel, because the recording process is transactional. You will find the magic when you’re doing it. But going in and guessing, it will never be what you want it to be.”
THE COLLABORATORS
You never know when the universe is going to throw you an opportunity. It’s up to you whether you want to grasp hold of it or not. So when the band’s long-time workmate Dan Weller admitted that his schedule wouldn’t allow him to man the production desk this time around, they were forced to consider even more breaks from the old routine. But in doing so, they were able to bring Carl Bown on board. Renowned for his work making the likes of Sleep Token and Bullet For My Valentine sound monolithic, Dani jumped at the chance to hear the band in a completely different light than they had become accustomed to.
“I don’t think there is anyone better out there sonically than Carl in the world,” he chirps. “He has a way of placing sounds to make them sound organic and not crushed, but also produced at the same time. That’s such a cool thing he can do. He’s been around heavy metal music for a long time. He knows the game, the sounds, and what’s going on. Also, he has produced the biggest band on the planet.”
To approach writing with a new face in the room, one that takes more of a backseat and lets the band do their thing compared to the active writing role that someone like Dan has in a process, would have, to his own admission, scared Dani a few years ago. Again, that is the safety net wrapping itself around his limbs, and the version of himself that stands before us today is much more excited about the potential in the unknown. Rather than letting the “What If” stifle him, he is stoked to let things fall into place.
“I looked at things differently in the past. But now we look at the blessings offered to us in the here and now. Like, holy crap, we get to work with Carl, one of the most renowned producers around, on our 8th album. We’re the biggest we have ever been. That doesn’t make sense. A lot of it comes down to perseverance, and some comes down to luck. More than anything, it’s all about showcasing our capabilities. It’s about being proud of what we have in the ranks. It’s much more fun to disconnect from what was before and view it in the now.”
THE LYRICS
It’s fair to say that the world has been throwing us all through the ringer a lot recently. From political unrest on both sides of the Atlantic to the resurgence of the sort of prejudices and discriminations that we had hoped were being left in the past, it’s impossible to look at the state of things without dreading where we are heading. And when it comes to functioning in your day-to-day life with such animosity and hatred polluting the air, it’s even harder to not get roped into the darkness of it all.
For Dani, the only way he has ever been able to personally make sense of things is through the lens of his own mental health. It’s a lens that allowed him to exorcise and expel plenty a demon when he penned the lyrics for ‘Cannibal’ back in 2020. But now, sharing the writing process with Tom, the result is a much more external experience that has allowed him to realise he is not alone in feeling this way. It’s how the wonderful ‘What If I Burn’, his personal tribute to the brilliance of La Dispute, can speak about the tricks our minds play on us within our perception of our existence so eloquently or why ‘Found No Throne’ can dive into the broken things we have to accept that we have inherited in such a profound manner. And though the words on the surface feel lost and angry, the glimmers of hope from us working through this together stick out the most. Understanding that we are not the first generation to deal with this hardship and conjure these musings, that there have always been those fighting for what is right, is a comfort that has inspired him more than he may have first realised. The way that things are is ever-changing, and these songs are just a vessel for this moment in time.
“I think we have been in this world for a long time,” he muses. “We talk about prejudice and discrimination and hate, and these aren’t new things. These are lifelong generational things; the same stuff that people have been going through for hundreds and hundreds of years. The changed element now is that much more media coverage breeds more activism and social justice. It’s encouraging to see that the conversation about these things is not lost, not just a scream into the darkness.”
Much of this feeling comes from the band’s recent tour across the USA alongside long-time friends, While She Sleeps. Though they were able to view the extremism and division that has infiltrated the country from state to state, Dani admits that he has also never seen so much activism taking place alongside it; both from inside the rooms they were playing but also out on the streets. For a band who have made understanding and openness such a central part of who they are, in addition to his career away from here as a Diversity and Inclusion Officer in the NHS, it served as a welcome reminder that what they represent isn’t lost in the noise.
“It was really interesting to see that light within the darkness. That people do still have that fire inside of them. It’s even more validating in the way that we have written a record about that. It validates these songs and the community we have been trying to make. I want all of metal scene to be like that. I’m not a saviour, but I want a safe and welcoming environment for those who are coming to our shows. I want those experiencing their first mosh pit or crowd surf to do so without fearing someone looking at them funny because of who they are. It goes completely against what the metal community is about. We’re all weirdos, and we’re all about fighting in a rebellious nature. So, seeing that has been really encouraging.”
THE TITLE
If ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’ hadn’t ended up umbrellaing these songs, Dani feels the record should have been called ‘Paradox’. The idea of you being able to have the yin without the yang. The hope of creating permanence within impermanence. And though the classic vision of haunting slots nicely to that idea, that a spirit or a spectre is the permanence left in the wake of the impermanence of death, Dani doesn’t want this album to be viewed in a ghostly manner.
It is more an idea of an atmosphere that lingers around you, a reminder that you aren’t alone in this. An atmosphere that lets you know that hoping for a better tomorrow isn’t an individual battle. It is everything and nothing at the very same time. It’s complex, but isn’t that just life?
“Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’ will hold a million different meanings, and that’s what I want it to do,” Dani comments. “Haunt is a noun, it’s an adjective, it’s a thing. It’s a juxtaposition between grief and love and life and everything in between. It is a continuation, it’s an act, it’s an action. It’s all of these things at once. And then, when you ask someone or something to haunt you, you’re asking it to stay with you. Or in the context of the title, be patient with you. That might mean to patient with you within your grief or in the things you have experienced, or it could be as simple as asking someone to not leave you. How can we remain together when everything is gone?”
That’s a lot to take in, but doesn’t it fill you with some sense of hope? Ultimately, that is what Dani wants people to take away from all of this. There is no right or wrong way to find what comforts you. Your view on the world and the things it is putting you through is unique, and if Bury Tomorrow can be the soundtrack to that in some way, then that is the highest praise they can receive.
“It draws parallels for me when people want to talk about what a song means. I’m almost loathed to do it. You have listened to these songs, and they have evoked a feeling or an expression out of you. I can’t tell you directly what they mean because they are about my feelings and expressions. They’re about a moment in time. That’s music, and it’s the way it should be. I want people to bastardise these words and do with them what they wish. It’s not mine to keep, it’s everybody’s to own.”
THE FUTURE
There are so many elements within the making of ‘Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience’ that will become staple practices in whatever Bury Tomorrow do next. Yet the most prominent aspect actually has nothing to do with looking to the future. For Dani, so much of the last two decades of his life in this band have been spent wondering where things may head from here. But now, he is digging his heels into today, appreciating the place that the band is in this very moment and basking in the gratitude that comes with that.
“I think that there’s a big element to all of this that comes with living in the now,” he smiles. “If I worried about whether we were going to be a band in another eight albums’ time, it’s going to stifle what I do now. It will change the whole process or make me want to end the band way before that. You might as well just enjoy what this all is now.
“They talk a lot about this in the mental health world. Getting up, getting dressed in nice clothes will make you feel better. Getting up and doing it and having fun means we will make better songs and be a better live band. Our bad days now would have been our incredible days in the past, and what a thing to be able to say.”
Content shared from rocksound.tv.