When a record hits you, when it appears from the shadows and then blasts through the cobwebs of mundanity, you know you’ve listened to something big, spontaneous, and brave. Bravery is one thing, but putting yourself out there, and gifting your heart to the cause, is another. Smashing your demons into pieces takes immense mental strength. Clawing your way out of the void makes you a titan, a person who can withstand the rattling storm.

There’s a band that has shown all this and more, and their 2018 album Black Flame is a testament to the people who get up in the morning and fight through the day. Their music may be rough, brazen, and highly charged, but it has the power to change perceptions. With Black Flame, metal core act Bury Tomorrow, didn’t alter the landscape and inner workings of the genre, they only augmented it to the higher, more accessible level.

The band, cherished by the metal core family, knows how to play and write lyrics which resonate. They’re not excessive, these words, they’re not outlandish or bizarre, they’re true and a little bitter, but point deeper into the mind. Though-provoking music should always be applauded too, it should be stuck to large speakers and played across the cold, joyless cities, and the words should be displayed up on gigantic billboards for all to see.

And Bury Tomorrow is a band totally embedded into the fabric of their musical talents. They’re the type of band that knows hurt, hardship, the downsides of broken worth. With their lyrical strands pulsating to be acknowledged, they only need to be read universally to be quickly acclaimed. Metal core will not be thrown across the musical world like confetti, it doesn’t have the appeal for that, but what it does have is honesty attached to its creative edge.

Bury Tomorrow has been pioneers of metal core since their inception in 2006. The band has littered the genre with systematic songs, animated in their delivery. Over the years, they’ve grown stronger as a collective of six musicians, crafting music which has aided the alienated, the outcasts who walk lonely, carrying guilt in their hearts, and the people who want to mend the fraying world.

Black Flame isn’t the only album in the band’s armoury. It all started with Portraits in 2009. An album raw and contagious, it blew the minds and created a buzz around metal core. Bury Tomorrow’s song writing started to aid other bands and creatives, and many acts began to rise and emerge, connect and become ensembled. This revolution may have been small, but for many, it sparked a transformation.    

Black Flame dropped on 13^th July 2018, and it catapulted Bury Tomorrow into the metal core limelight. It was their tour de force in terms of musicality, steamrolling everything in the metal core calendar that year. To be honest, Black Flame ignited a new hunger for metal core, as the genre was falling by the wayside, and not only that, there were too many imitations flooding the market.

Trying to break down Black Flame isn’t an almighty task. It has its technicalities, guitar wizardly, and powerful vocal work, but it isn’t a difficult listen. And at moments, the listener will be overawed by the precision, the intricate instrumentals, the growls, the screams, the value of entertainment. It has it all on a high level.

Lyrically Black Flame outdoes every metal core release. They’re refined, placed perfectly, and beautifully dark. Lead singer Daniel Winter-Bates screams this poetry of value and intent. Poetry about stress, the world, the bubbling pressures of life. He knows hurt; he has seen things, and through his lyrical notes, he tells us all without hesitation, too.

Black Flame opens with No Less Violent and it’s a breakneck inclusion. An opening fit for a metal core extravaganza, it delivers high tempo notes and speedy guitar play. The lyrics are honed to tell a vivid story. ‘’A life I spent alone, I’m just skin and bone, how could you not see? You beg and plead down on your knees. How. How could you not see?’’  

No Less Violent has become a masterstroke, a song birthed by a broken mind. It’s an immense start to an album full of truth.

The title track Black Flame epitomises what Bury Tomorrow always set out to do, and that’s evoking memories, and to make people stand up and notice. The quick fired guitar work releases the tension and the lyrics spill ‘’Here I stand, alone, with hate, here I stand, too long, too late, all I know, is you will leave us all, here I stand, alone, to fall’’

Every track represents thoughts and feelings. The feelings that are hard to comprehend, but are there trying to burst through to the surface. Black Flame has songs which all interweave into a bold story. They all mean something, they all carry weight. Songs such as The Age and Overcast show Black Flame is a stellar album in its entirety. And these tracks shudder and shudder, making waves.

Such an emotional opus too, Black Flame can be that go to collection when you’re suffering, when the world weighs on your shoulders, when walking through blustery storms. Not for the faint hearted, it rushes to the summit of noise quickly, it quivers the spine rapidly, and it isn’t the most joyous of records.

Bury Tomorrow is a band which plays with confidence, even though it seems like it is shattered. They play monumental music, music brimming in well developed trickery, and lyrics which can release shivers. Pushing the boundaries of what can be achieved in the lines of metal core, Bury Tomorrow has achieved, and quite rightly has created a buzz around the genre, which in truth was faltering, and fading into black. Now, they’re many bands taking notes, and playing their hearts out due to a band that saved it.

It may sound audacious to some, but Black Flame is a masterful release, and should be commended for its originality and premise, a story worthy of a bestselling novel.