Live-Metal.Net - Interviews: Bury Your Dead

Well, sort of. Mat Bruso is actually just back from the classroom. The vocalist departed the band in 2007 to pursue a career as a teacher, but after the band he left behind went through two more vocalist changes and struggled to find a permanent replacement, they gave Bruso the call once again.

Bury Your Dead never really went away, but now in 2011 this could be considered a comeback of sorts. With Bruso back in the fold and a new album, aptly titled Mosh ‘n’ Roll, the band is hoping to recapture the hardcore spirit that saw them at their breakdown-best not too long ago. And most important, the band is back on the road, turning every venue they play into a pile of bodies, flying elbows, kicks and kids losing their minds.

Live-Metal.net’s Jeff Maki recently talked with Bruso about his return to the band, the new album and mosh pit etiquette.

Live-Metal.net: Obviously, you’re probably sick of talking about your rejoining the band, but I’ll try to get more specific about some things regarding this. I think Bury Your Dead was at its peak prior to you leaving, and I don’t think they were as successful commercially with the other singers after you left. So whose decision was it to get you back in the band? Was it just the matter of a phone call?

Mat Bruso: When I left Bury Your Dead to teach and stuff like that, it was definitely a very selfish decision. I would agree, not necessarily that Bury Your Dead was at its peak, but that certainly things were going well. I never wanted to ride a band into the ground or anything like that, so I always hoped to be able to get out on top. Bury Your Dead continued to play shows and bring the mosh everywhere and make a lot of people very happy while I was gone.

And I don’t really know the exact details of (vocalist) Myke (Terry) leaving the band. I just know that when it didn’t work out with Myke, I basically just got a call from (Brendan) “Slim” (MacDonald). And who I am to say no? It’s not often that when you approach 30 that you get to do what you did when you were 20. And I was pretty close to finishing school, had a job and was pretty secure. So they wanted me back in Bury Your Dead, so I said yes. That’s pretty much how me coming back worked.

Judging from what you were just saying there, you do kind of feel a measure of guilt from your time out of the band? Do you feel like you owe these guys a little something extra this time around or anything like that?

I don’t know if I owe anything extra. No, not really. I don’t know, maybe our plans for the band were different. I know musically they went in a different direction after I left with things that I didn’t have the intention of doing. I think it opened the door for them to experiment. I don’t think any of them were particularly unhappy while I was gone. They did huge tours with huge bands, sold a bunch of records and got to live the life. They did nothing but bus tours while I was gone. I’ve only ever been on a bus once, so I think they did OK. They’ve been to Europe three or four times in the last two years without me, and I’ve never been to Europe. So I feel like when I left them they were in a good enough place where they had enough momentum and talent in the band to keep the ship moving. I’m just psyched to be back and to be able to play shows again. Honestly, being in a band is kind of stupid unless you’re playing shows.

This is the main topic of our interview and your return to the band also seems to be the main marketing point for the new album, Mosh ‘n’ Roll. Obviously, this is big news with you rejoining, but what are your feelings on being the main marketing tool for the album? Would you rather the music just speak for itself?

Well, I don’t know. I happen to love attention—it’s why I like singing in a band, it’s why I like teaching in front of a classroom. I’m just good at receiving attention. But being billed as one of the reasons why people should check out this record, I kind of appreciate that. It’s a compliment that people would give a crap that I’m back or that I sing on the record. I’ve done (guest) vocals for a couple of bands; Four Year Strong, Catalepsy, The Ghost Inside, and people have been really, really excited to hear those songs. And I’m super-flattered by that, so I don’t think I’ve ever second-guessed it as a marketing tool. But for me—and I say it all the time—I want everyone in the world to own the record, and obviously it’d be cool to sell a trillion copies of it. But for me, the record only exists for people to learn the words and to know when mosh parts are coming and know when to mosh. I only care about playing live shows. Bury Your Dead, in my opinion, has always been about live shows—the energy we convey off stage and receive from the audience. This record is just basically a bunch of songs that are written to go over well live and have people want to scream the words to and go hard.

I would say that Bury Your Dead were one of the first “metalcore” or “hardcore breakdown”-type bands very early on, going all the way back to 2001. Since then, we’ve seen bands like Emmure and Suicide Silence taking this even further with “deathcore” and all of these other branches of the style. Do you guys see yourselves as innovators of this style? What is your feeling on the way the style has evolved and is still evolving?

We get that question quite a bit. Yeah, because you’re talking about huge bands that are really, really heavy, like Suicide Silence and Emmure, Bring Me the Horizon. Those are bands that are really doing great things, and a lot of people attribute some of their success to what Bury Your Dead accomplished earlier on. I don’t think Bury Your Dead is the originator of anything, per se, but I think it’s cool that we got to do some of the legwork as far as helping that kind of music cross over. And it’s cool that there’s room at the table for all of these bands now. It’s definitely really flattering because all of those bands seem to kind of attribute some of their influence to Bury Your Dead and some of the stuff I did with the band before I left.

We worked really, really hard—Bury Your Dead worked super-hard. We toured our asses off and always made sure we were taking the right tour to try and help this particular brand of heavy music to cross over and appeal to a broader audience. And to make sure that all the hardcore kids coming out have new people to beat up every week. Now whether or not we have contributed to the success of the genre, I think that’s too pretentious to presume. But the fact that people believe that we have is super-flattering and I really appreciate the feeling.

Now does this influence work in both ways? Are you at all influenced by a band like Emmure or Bring Me the Horizon or any of the newer bands when you hear their records?

Well, it seems today that there’s nothing original, and that’s fine. We didn’t invent moshing. But I think we try to write the next thing, more than trying to do the “last” thing. I think a lot of these heavier bands are overly synthesized in parts, or they kind of retreat to a really thrashy metal sound. But again, we try and write the next cool thing that people will listen to. I don’t know how much of that we did on this record that anybody thinks is worth listening to, but I can tell you when you hear it live, it’s going to blow everyone’s mind—that’s what it was written for.

I saw you guys back in 2006 opening for Shadows Fall and this was my first experience of this type of scene—the hardcore dancing and that whole type of thing. I grew up a metalhead and was more into thrash and that type of stuff. But the place just went apeshit—arms flailing, bodies slamming … But how has hardcore dancing evolved? Are there new moves and shit that people are coming up with all the time? Is it different now than your first time around with the band?

Well, there have been some big, big changes. One, there’s more people, so you see a large crossover. The blend of kids is what you were just describing with straight metal and hardcore kids. And the fact that they both listen to the same bands now, and the bands they like are touring with other bands that they normally wouldn’t go near. So this puts them all in the world together. The bands are getting bigger, the venues are getting bigger, the audience is getting bigger. So it forces an all-new mosh style or whatever you want to call it.

And the other thing is that some of the energy, intensity and violence that you would see reserved for the larger markets—now because there is no such thing as a small market—have kind of crossed over. Things that we only ever used to see in Boston and L.A.—they would just beat the crap out of each other. Now we can play in the center of the country and see the same thing—you have your big middle tour stop in Texas and all of the locals will go absolutely out of their mind.

So I don’t know if it has evolved, but the culture of it has evolved and become bigger and more permeated. And that’s really, really cool.

Speaking of moshing and the so-called violence as you put it, what’s some of the worst stuff you’ve seen out in the crowd, good or bad?

Well without an opinion, good or bad—you know, I don’t want to go to prison anytime soon—I’ve seen some pretty ridiculous stuff. I’ve seen dudes in security shirts in between the barrier and the stage punching kids in the face who were just moshing from their own little security area—just going hard and it’s crazy, absolutely crazy. I’ve seen kids climb up on the highest thing they can find in the room and just jump off of it and come down. And I’m just thinking to myself, “Holy crap! That was insane!” I’ve seen basically almost everything on this comeback tour and everyday I’m saying to myself, “I’m really glad I don’t have to mosh to my own band.” [laughs] Every day, kids are going way, way hard, and it’s awesome.

And then we’ve seen the very dark side of that, too, when someone was trampled to death on the floor during Deftones. And we’ve played shows and watched kids stage-diving that literally cracked their skulls open and bleed plasma all over the ground until they die right there. It’s not always all fun and games when kids go all high energy and make stupid decisions. But 99.999 percent of the shows we play are positive. They might be violent but not at anyone’s expense, per se.

Obviously, it’s your band’s goal to get the crowd to mosh, dance and go ape-shit, but is there any advice you could give someone before getting in the pit and swinging arms around and just going berserk at a show?

I don’t know, because it really varies from city to city. There’s a politics to the floor that you need to understand about your area. Everywhere you go, there’s nowhere where that doesn’t exist. But if you go up there with a positive attitude and associate yourself with other people who are trying to have a positive attitude then you should be all set. We played Oakland yesterday and the whole range, the whole gauntlet of people that go and go hard was on the floor that day, and they were going as hard as they go and absolutely zero people got hurt.

So it’s not like, “Hey, if you go out there make sure you wear a mouthpiece or eyewear.” I say go out there and don’t bring an attitude with you. If you go out there and have fun and associate yourself with other people who want to have fun, and you understand the culture of where you’re from, then you’re doing yourself a great service there.

OK, Mat, could you just outline the band’s upcoming touring plans for us and that’s it?

Seattle is next, and then we continue going around the country in the direction of home. I know it sounds cheesy and cliché, but I’m really excited to play every single one of them. We’ve had shows on this tour with 70 kids and it’s been unbelievable, and then we’ve had totally sold-out shows with 1,000-plus. This whole thing has been ridiculous and off-the-wall, and it’s been awesome. I’m excited to continue doing it. I graduated high school in Worcester, Mass., and we’re playing there Aug. 2 for the CD release party. I cannot wait to play that show—people are gonna LOSE THEIR MINDS. It’s gonna be insane.

And it’s like I said earlier—it seems like every band and their mom gets to go to Europe and Australia. It’s just part of the scene that it’s permeated pop culture so hard that every band gets to go overseas, but I’ve never got to do that. And now I’ll be going overseas for my first visit, and I feel like [the other guys in the band] need to show me the world. I am so excited to go overseas and see how hard people go in Scotland, and to see what all the buzz is about playing Chile. I hear that German crowds are second to none. And I’m just excited to see if that’s true of not.

That’s what I got. I just wanted to say it’s good to have you back in the band, and is there anything else you want to say?

I had a good time answering questions, and Aug. 2 the record comes out. Buy it so we can get our scans up and so we can get whatever tour we want, so I can get to your city and beat the crap out of all of your friends. Mediaskare is treating us like gold, and I just want to make sure we return the favor.