British metalcore outfit Bury Tomorrow have returned with their arguably most emotionally honest record yet, Will You Haunt Me With That Same Patience. Released on May 16th (read our review here), the record continues the new era for the band with the addition of rhythm guitarist Ed Hartwell and keyboardist/vocalist Tom Prendergast, where both were more or less introduced in 2023’s The Seventh Sun. Metal Insider caught up with Hartwell to discuss their latest release.
What was the recording process like for Will You Haunt Me With That Same Patience?
We went with Carl Bown this time for the first time, and the tracking process was fairly tough just due to it being very disjointed due to our schedules. We first recorded Villain Arc and Let Go in November 2023, so we were sitting on those for a while and then we did the rest of it over the summer of 2024 in various sessions. It’s about a 4 hour drive to the studio for the southern boys in the band but we’d rent an Airbnb and stay up for like a week or so at a time and just hang out in between. Carl’s studio is super nice and he’s really great company too, it’s been awesome to have a new perspective on the way we put the music together.
Which song was more challenging to write?
For me personally I would say Yokai, which took a fair bit of juggling around structurally until we knew where it was gonna go. Also Let Go had a bunch of different choruses until we found the right one, I’m sure Tom enjoyed that!
How would you compare the new album to 2023’s The Seventh Sun?
I personally feel like we just pushed the sound further than we did before, even though that’s probably a cliché thing to say. On the last album we hadn’t released any music under this new lineup before we started recording (We put the first ‘new era’ single Death (Ever Colder) out whilst we were already tracking TSS). So this time round I feel like we were more confident in trying slightly different things to what we’d done previously, which has worked out well in our opinion.
How did experimenting with different genres challenge you creatively and influence your approach to writing this record?
We’re all definitely massively influenced by genres far outside of metal, Dawson will sometimes send me like a dance song and say “I wanna write a heavy version of this”. You can pretty much get away with murder when people aren’t necessarily making those connections as opposed to taking direct influence from a metalcore song. I’ve definitely heard melodies in super soft ambient music and used the idea in a different key and tempo to use as a bed to write on top of and found it to be really effective. Sometimes it can be as simple as one chord change.
What led to the stylistic choice for “Let Go” to include hip-hop elements?
To be honest I don’t think there was any intentional desire to add those elements in, the song originally started as an electronic piece of music that Tom had in amongst his folders of demos and Daws wrote the riffs and stuff over it piece by piece. Dan does a verse which some people have referred to as a rap, he was just like “ok I guess!”, there was certainly no discussion of him saying that’s what he was gonna do.
Was there a track that came together unexpectedly or took a completely different direction than planned?
Wasteland took a bit of turn based on how it started, again this was one of Tom’s electronic demos with no guitars and it ended up having some really heavy groove added to it where we were all expecting it to sorta be this more pop metal thing, I think the track really benefited from having multiple hands on deck as ours often do.
Silence Isn’t Helping Us carries the album’s title within its chorus. What made that line significant enough to define the record?
I think it’s collectively one of our favourite choruses on the album and it’s also just one of Tom’s coolest lines too. I know it’s not super uncommon for it to happen but we enjoy the idea of the album title being hidden in a song where it’s not the title. The band also hasn’t done a long title or a photo for the cover/artwork so it felt like a cool step in a different direction for us personally.
Now that this album is complete, what’s next for Bury Tomorrow?
Touring of course, back into USA in April and then the album comes out on the 16th May so we have some album release shows in Europe and the UK to celebrate that. We have a nice quiet summer for once but then finishing off the year with a Euro arena tour with Electric Callboy which will be a blast. We’re all already writing new songs though, so we’re always cooking between us!
Is there anything else you want to say or add about the new album?
Just thank you if you checked it out and for supporting the band, it really means the world to us all.
Bury Tomorrow, Will You Haunt Me With That Same Patience, is available to order at this location.
