Bury Tomorrow have been ever present on the UK metalcore scene since 2006, and throughout their career have always been on the cusp of something quite special. 2016’s “Earthbound” was an incredible piece of work, but it seemed like that they had always failed to gain traction and propel themselves into the greater consciousness.
However, when the title track of their fifth album “Black Flame” dropped, Bury Tomorrow made one of the most convincing claims to be one of the leading bands in metalcore. Drawing influence from both the Gothenburg scene and the New Wave of American Heavy Metal, “Black Flame” delivers on the former’s relentless riffery and brutality and the latter’s monumental melodies. Yet with every new metalcore band describing each of their new records as “heavier, yet more melodic”, how can a band set themselves apart from the hundreds of contemporaries?
The answer, in Bury Tomorrow’s case, is to simply just do everything better than all of those bands.
To compare their growth with their American counterparts Killswitch Engage and Atreyu, by the time both bands hit their fifth records, they were beginning to run out of steam. KSE had put out their weakest album to date and their last with Howard Jones, and Atreyu had started to lose momentum attempting to merge both their hard rock and metalcore influences.
On the other hand, Bury Tomorrow have slowly but steadily matured with each release. Instead of straying into different territories and experimenting with different genres, they have consistently built upon the basic foundations of metalcore. The riffs are both more technical and more memorable, the hooks are sharper and have more immediate impact, and the choruses are anthemic without falling victim to lyrical clichés.
The album doesn’t let up during its run time, and every track is perfectly sculpted and positioned to allow for maximum impact. The bruising “My Revenge” and pummeling “More Than Mortal” give way for the disgustingly brutal “Knife of Gold”, that starts off hitting you like a pneumatic drill , then attacking you with a sledgehammer to the skull.
There’s not a second wasted throughout “Black Flame”. Any fat has been trimmed to deliver the most to the point piece of work Bury Tomorrow have ever written. With this record, Bury Tomorrow rightfully seat themselves next to Architects and While She Sleeps as the shining lights of British metalcore.