Bury Tomorrow On Tour With Make Them Suffer

‘It has all been a little bit surreal to be honest. The first gig being Slam Dunk when I might have shit myself, I’ve never been so scared of a gig in my life. Then the first festival summer were all just shows beyond anything that I thought I’d ever do. It’s all been like this trial by fire. If it was going to fail, it was going to fail really early on.’

Bury Tomorrow’s Tom Prendergast displays a relaxed fun demeanor for a man thrust into the spotlight with one the UK’s premium metalcore bands and told to sing, tour the world and write music for a storming album called The Seventh Sun.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever really properly been able to comprehend it, so I’ve just focused on, alright, we’ve got an album to write, we’ve finished that. It’s just been a case of doing the thing and occasionally I think I get a minute to sit back and be like, what’s going on?! But that seems to be quite few and far between, which I think I’m probably quite thankful for to be honest! It’s nice to see how it’s received when we’re out doing gigs, talking to fans and for you to have that perception, like you said that the album kind of went off as it did. I’m like, that’s sick! We don’t always see what the outward perception is, so it’s very nice. It’s nice to get those little moments. That’s almost like a glimpse into how it seems like it’s going on the outside.’

The Seventh Sun dropped in early 2023 and it is a testament to the enduring quality of the music that even now, in mid-2024, Bury Tomorrow continue to add dates around Europe and of course, visit our shores soon.

‘We love it! I cannot wait to come back to Australia! That was the best tour and to come back with Make Them Suffer. It’s like, yeah! I’m not looking forward to the flight, I don’t like flying, but I’m really looking forward to being there. To be able to come back and to do that and to speak with you about it. We’ve got one Japanese show to put on the end of the Australian tour and Japan’s a dream for me. So yeah, it is mad. It’s making me realise how mad it is when you are talking about it. Yeah, very fortunate!’

Tom, like fellow newbie Ed Hartwell, joined right before Slam Dunk festival and had to replace a key member of the band, not just for shows but every day of the band. That brings its own pressure.

‘An insane amount of pressure. I don’t think I’ve ever been as nervous for a gig in my life to have just done Slam Dunk and then the festival shows. That was a lot of pressure, a lot of it that I put on myself because the lads in the band are sick. They are super supportive. They’re like, ‘don’t try and sound like him, just do your thing’. Obviously your first thing is like, ‘well, I’m singing somebody else’s songs here. How do I do that justice?’ It has been overwhelmingly positive and the internet, there’s always comparison and there’s always like, oh, we miss the old vocalist and that’s fine. There’s a lot of records where he is on it and that music will live forever. It’s such a big part of the band’s history and their growth. I just hope that when we do those tracks, we do them justice and for people to be as accepting as they have been with the new stuff, I’m just very grateful for it. I’ve got no expectation from this point, but it’s just great to be able to keep making music and to have the support of that fan base. Yeah, it’s very cool.’

As the – joint – new guy, you can always hear horror stories of how newbies are treated, this doesn’t seem to be the case with the tight knit group like Bury Tomorrow.

‘I feel like, and I think I speak for me and Ed with this, we’ve always been made to feel like a part of it. The only not feeling a part of it is definitely me with the imposter syndrome, feeling like the new kid and that is purely in that situation. That’s always purely down to me. They’ve been like, ‘right, we’re in, this is six ways’. Everything’s even, everybody’s got a say. Everybody’s got an opinion. No one opinion is more or less valid than the other. Everything just serves the betterment of the band or the betterment of the music or the betterment of whatever. So yeah, it’s been very supportive.’

So this leads us to the upcoming shows in Australia supporting Make Them Suffer in August and September before they return in the favour back in the UK.

‘No fire this time, which we take fire everywhere, just energy crowd participation. We’ve got a limited amount of time that we’re going to fit as much as we can into it and just warm the crowd up for Make Them Suffer. Their energy is so good on stage and the whole thing as well is like, because they go so hard, it’s like, well, we’ve got to go that hard as well. So it’s almost like you just raise each other up. So yeah, we’ll bring it’.

‘I think doing the shows out with them in the summer, it just felt instantly comfortable just having a laugh. Just really, really fucking good people, it almost feels like we’re just sharing this world tour anyway. We’ve got to do a good chunk of Europe with them. We get to come over and hang out with them and be a part of their growth in Australia. Then for us to be able to bring them over and do what will be our biggest headline shows, to have them along with us is just sick. It just feels like the metal core community is kind of going up like this at the minute and for us to be doing it with other bands that we genuinely love as bands and as sick people. It is a very wholesome thing and it’s really good to be a part of.’

Interview By Iain McCallum

Catch Bury Tomorrow on the following dates with Make Them Suffer, Spite and Bloom. Tickets from Destroy All Lines…