The Seventh Sun

After parting ways with guitarist/clean vocalist and band co-founder Jason Cameron in 2021, Bury Tomorrow had some soul-searching to do. At first, they seriously considered dissolving the band. But ultimately, the British metalcore stars decided to carry on with two new members—keyboardist/clean vocalist Tom Prendergast and guitarist Ed Hartwell—in Cameron’s stead. To test the waters, they released two stand-alone singles in 2022: “Death (Ever Colder)” and “Life (Paradise Denied).” “They went down really, really well,” vocalist Dani Winter-Bates tells Apple Music. “You rarely get a chance to litmus test an album—essentially a sound and a feel—but we did, and we’ll probably do it again.” Bury Tomorrow’s appropriately titled seventh full-length, *The Seventh Sun*, picks up where those singles left off. “People have asked if there was more pressure on this album, but it almost feels like the pressure’s off somewhat,” Winter-Bates says. “We chose to continue in this band, and we chose to continue in a different way. That choice has given us a bit of freedom, and we’re super proud of how it turned out.” Below, he comments on each track. **“The Seventh Sun”** “For human beings, the cycles are around the sun. For the band, this is our seventh time ’round, because each one of those suns is your album, essentially. And seven is quite a significant number, obviously, in lots of things. I usually fixate on the negative, like seven circles of hell or seven deadly sins. But for us, *The Seventh Sun* is about our journey, this next chapter and this next cycle. It’s a statement of intent: ‘We’re here, and we’re going as hard as we possibly can.’” **“Abandon Us”** “Lots of people connotate the title with our lineup change, but it’s not actually about that. This is about the fact that we, as humans, operate in a very negative and consumerist light. We take and we take and we take, and then we leave for dead. For me, the ethos of our band is about acting with kindness in all that we can do. The borders that we create, the issues that we create, the segregation that we create are all man-made. These aren’t concepts that exist in any other form, other than in mankind. For me, this song is about recognizing that and calling it out.” **“Begin Again”** “This is very much about renewal. On our last album, *Cannibal*, I wrote heavily about my own journey with mental health and my own experiences. It was very, very introspective—the most so of any record we\'d done. This song is recognizing that sometimes you have to go through that fire to be able to come out the other side. There’s a couple of really poignant lyrics in there about crawling when you can no longer walk. There’s always something you can do to step forward.” **“Forced Divide”** “In the studio, I contracted COVID, which is mental considering we were in an isolated studio in an old manor house. I had septic tonsillitis and COVID at the same time, which for a vocalist was not the best. And I still had ‘Forced Divide’ to record. The song is all about that rip and pull that we find when we have to cut off the dead weight that goes along sometimes with relationships. It’s a really hard thing to do, but sometimes you’ve got to trim the leaves for growth. And it’s a metalcore slammer. It’s as thrashy as you get from us.” **“Boltcutter”** “This is probably the most savage song on the record. It’s not like anything we’ve ever really written before. It’s nodding to the seventh-sun element of this togetherness, this being able to push through. It is as anti-hierarchical as you could probably get from me, a very anti-establishment song. It’s not necessarily that I’m fully anti-establishment; it’s just more so that, at this moment in time, in not just the UK but worldwide, there seems to be a need for a reset. So, again, there’s that renewal theme.” **“Wrath”** “This is a real heartstrings one, very emotional. Our guitarist Kris \[Dawson\], one of his friends lost their mum recently. He was going through the stages of grief that you go through, and Kris told me that he wanted a song about that. I lost my nan at the start of COVID, so I started pulling in that feeling. Some people think about what happens after death, and other people think about what happens right now. That all depends on whatever spirituality or faith people have—or don’t have. After you go through all the anxiety and anger, you come to that realization within grief that all you want to do is make that person proud.” **“Majesty”** “Before Tom joined the band, him and Kris had been writing together for years. They’ve grown up with each other, and they wrote this one in lockdown. I was listening to it on my own, and I loved it. So, when Tom joined, I was like, ‘I’ll be taking that song off your hands, thank you very much.’ Lyrically, it’s about this feeling of isolation and how we need to be together. They’re calling out to, I suppose, that love and togetherness that we had prior to the pandemic, and that hopefully we’ll gain once more.” **“Heretic” (feat. Loz Taylor)** “This is as pissed off as you probably get me as a vocalist. It’s a particularly violent song, and it has to do with living in chaos and understanding that we can use that to our advantage sometimes. For the middle bit, we got Loz Taylor; While She Sleeps are our boys and have been for years. And Loz has never done a guest vocal before. The whole of the song is call-and-response, and his vocals fit so perfectly with that feel. It’s a real contrast to my vocals.” **“Recovery?”** “Lyrically, this is a bit of a throwback to *Cannibal*. When I wrote that album, it was very much how I felt in that moment, talking about anxiety, depression, and OCD. ‘Recovery?’ is how I feel now. I have to accept the fact that, even though I’ve had a long-standing journey with my own mental health, I’m never going to recover. I’m never going to get rid of my anxiety or chronic depression. It’s just part of my life. I have this new understanding that it’s a long-term condition. And that’s nothing to be ashamed about.” **“Care”** “This was the first song that Kris and Tom sent, and they’d written it prior to Tom joining the band. It’s an expression about how the world is incredibly unkind, especially to those people that are drowning. We care more about how shiny our boat is than we do about chucking a life raft to someone else. And for good measure, we might as well chuck a load of rubbish on top of them. But this world is nothing without kindness. It’s pivotal to our survival.” **“The Carcass King” (feat. Cody Frost)** “Cody Frost is an unbelievable human being, just a force to be reckoned with. An artist in the truest sense, I think. The producer we were working with, Dan \[Weller\], is Cody’s producer as well. When he showed me her stuff, it was just like this unbelievable level of vocals. ‘The Carcass King’ is very heavy and very emotive, which is a blend we’ve always wanted but have been really scared of it sounding conceited. The song is very much about self-defamation, but I wanted it to be theatrical and poetic. And I think Cody really ramped that up. It’s something special.”

Southampton metal kings Bury Tomorrow roar back mightily on redemptive seventh album…

Dan McHugh reviews the latest release from Bury Tomorrow. Read his review of 'The Seventh Sun' here on Distorted Sound!