A couple of hours prior to the band’s stunning breakthrough performance where they smashed The Pepsi Max Tent and its inhabitants to smithereens at Download 2013, Rocksins was lucky enough to catch up with Bury Tomorrow frontman Daniel Winter-Bates backstage at Donington. Dan talked about the bands he was looking forward to seeing at the festival, the reaction to The Union Of Crowns, the band nearly calling it quits and much more. Read on for details…
The stupidly obvious question has to come first, how much are you looking forward to performing later?
Dan: Yeah it’s gonna be wild! It’s my first time here so it’s going to be nuts. We’ve never played before, and it’s my first time here even as a punter.
Were you here (at Donington) yesterday?
Dan: No yesterday we travelled back from Switzerland, we were playing Greenfield festival there with Stone Sour and a load of other bands. We literally did a twenty hour drive straight here and got here about an hour ago.
Rocksins: Tired?
Dan: Definitely, I’m on about two hours sleep.
Rocksins: I’m sure the adrenaline will carry you through.
Dan: Yeah, it’ll be fine! Plus I’ll be drinking later *laughs*
Are you able to hang around after the performance or do you have to head to another festival?
Dan: Luckily we’re here for the whole weekend.
Rocksins: Any bands you’re particularly looking forward to seeing?
Dan: There’s a lot of bands I want to see tomorrow, obviously bands like Parkway Drive, and Rammstein of course. Limp Bizkit too. All the bands I liked when I was younger.
Rocksins: The whole Limp Bizkit vs Rammstein clash has caused some heartache for a lot of people!
Dan: Yeah man but Rammstein will be spectacular. If you haven’t seen them before I’d advise anyone to go and see them, but if you have seen them before, go and watch Bizkit.
We understand you’ve just announced a new UK headline tour for October?
Dan: Yeah, literally JUST announced it…yesterday I think?!
Rocksins: Will there be a lot of shows on that tour?
Dan: I think it’s nine shows. We wanted to hit all of the main places but not over-saturate things.
Rocksins: Have you sorted out any of the support acts for the tour yet?
Dan: It’s not been announced yet but it’s been locked down, it’ll be announced within the next few weeks. We’re just trying to get some tickets sold first.
Obviously The Union Of Crowns has been out for awhile now and you seem to have received almost universally positive feedback for it, you guys must be thrilled with all the feedback & the reaction?
Dan: Absolutely. We never expected it to take off in the way it has really. We just wrote the album for ourselves and wanted to get it out. The fact that people have dug it is awesome. The fact that anyone at all dug it is awesome! We’re really happy with the response and it keeps being positive so hopefully that continues.
I don’t know how you guys in the band saw it but from the outside it all seemed to blow up when the Lionheart video came out…
Dan: Yeah, Lionheart put us back on the map I think as far as being a UK presence. We were a bit on the downward slope to be honest with you…
Rocksins: There are so many good UK bands who’ve emerged from the pack such as yourselves and While She Sleeps and Bleed From Within and Sylosis so there is lots of competition out there.
Dan: There is but we’re all friends so we all support each other and support each other’s music so it works out pretty well for us. Like you say Lionheart got us back on the map and from there we knew we had to get the album out as soon as possible so we got it done and got it out.
Will the October tour be the last tour before you start thinking about the next album?
Dan: We’ve already started writing and we’re going to be recording in November so we’re not hanging around with this one. We don’t want to wait as long as we did between Portraits and The Union Of Crowns so its important we keep things going, we’ve got a new guitarist now, lots of positivity so lets keep it going.
How are you finding being on Nuclear Blast?
Dan: Good! It’s cool to be the lightest band on the label *laughs*. They support us and we’re a band who respect people that have faith in us. From day one with our first demo of The Union Of Crowns they said they dug it and wanted to sign us and that was without any vocal tracks. So from there we were like “this is the label we want to be with, they support us”. Yeah, it’s all good.
Rocksins: Were there other options available to you?
Dan: We had a couple of other options, we had some major label interest but it is what it is. But Nuclear Blast had faith in us and we’ll be continuing with them.
One last question, which we’re asking to everyone this weekend: Can you give us a funny story involving yourself or one of the other guys in the band or something interesting that’s happened on the road recently?
Dan: Here’s one: If anyone here at Download has seen my brother Davyd, basically my bassist brother has been on a diet for sixty days. It’s the insanity diet, he hasn’t drunk until Download. The sixtieth day is today. It will be incredibly funny if anyone sees him today after our set when he’s had his first drink. So hopefully we can get some stories of my bassist brother out of his mind after he’s been back on the drink.
Did you see Davyd Winter-Bates in a worse for wear state in the hallowed grounds of Donington after Bury Tomorrow’s excellent performance? If so, please leave a comment on the interview as we’re sure both the band and ourselves would love to hear those stories. If you’d like to read our coverage of the Saturday of Download 2013 including the review of Bury Tomorrow’s set it is available here.
Since this interview Bury Tomorrow have confirmed that Feed The Rhino, Empress and Heart In Hand will all join them on their October 2013 UK headline tour. Full tour date and ticket information is available on the original announcement here. Bury Tomorrow also headline the Hype Stage at Redfest in Surrey in less than two weeks time (preview available here). Any further updates from the Bury Tomorrow camp will be made available here on Rocksins as and when they are available. Stay tuned to Rocksins.com for loads more interviews with metal’s finest from backstage at Download 2013!
Bury Tomorrow’s current album The Union Of Crowns is out now on Nuclear Blast Records. If you want to keep up-to-date with Daniel Winter-Bates, you can follow him on Twitter at @DanBuryTomorrow
