Melodic metalcore is a tough sell around the majority of the DR staff. Especially considering this journalist lived through a lot of the impetus in New England when Killswitch Engage, Shadows Fall, All That Remains, and Unearth went from opening eyes to opening summer festivals and eventually latching onto theater headlining tours together. England’s Bury Tomorrow have received a less than ideal reception for their second album The Union of Crowns when this site was under a previous Blistering webzine umbrella – so let’s safely say that for album four Earthbound didn’t hedge hopes for a massive turnaround to the good.
Standard breakdowns and tough guy screams/shouts are part and parcel of the Bury Tomorrow foundation – the melodic part coming in during occasional lead breaks from Kristan Dawson and the modern rock, clean singing parts from rhythm guitarist Jason Cameron. In fact during certain sections of “Cemetery” the quintet come together musically and vocally to channel older Sevendust – but then that half-step djent groove nature switch occurs to bewilder any semblance of songwriting separation. Simplistic chorus hooks and equally basic chord rides probably go down a storm with the diehard teenagers, and this 10 song album lives for that militant bark and low driving chug.
Damned if my ears could distinguish “Last Light” from “Memories” – and when the band would choose to be more punk or thrash oriented for the first section of “301”, the clean note hold outs for the chorus reared up and pushed the album back into a metalcore comfort zone. ‘No one asked you/Did I say I care?’ emanating from the larynx of Daniel Winter-Bates speaks volumes for Earthbound in terms of not separating from the cookie cutter, conveyor belt attitude this genre has gravitated towards for a solid decade.
Somehow the Hot Topic brigade will praise Bury Tomorrow as the saviors of melodic metalcore – it’s nothing new and 36 minutes that quickly vanishes from the memory banks.