E-Mail This Article to a Friend Blade aid Unearth and Beyond the Embrace sign to a storied metal label BY SEAN RICHARDSON
	More on this topic Balancing acts: Shadows Fall, Unearth, and the Hope Conspiracy. By Sean Richardson.

It’s been three long years since the release of the first Unearth album, The Stings of Conscience, on the South Florida hardcore label Eulogy. The Boston band spent most of that time in the van, eventually becoming enough of a draw that they found themselves opening for regional heroes Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall on last fall’s Headbangers Ball Tour. Now they’re ready to put out their second disc, The Oncoming Storm (Metal Blade), and they’re gearing up to spend this summer on the road with Ozzfest 2004. This Friday, a week before that trek kicks off, the group are playing a CD-release show at the Palladium in Worcester.

Along with San Diego’s As I Lay Dying, Unearth are the new face of metal at one of the genre’s most storied labels. Back in the day, Metal Blade was among the first to champion Metallica and Slayer, and it was also one of the driving forces behind 1990s death metal. The label wasn’t first out of the gate in the current metalcore sweepstakes, but now it’s making up for lost time.

"Metal Blade have always been a handshake away from us," Unearth guitarist Ken Susi explains. "They would come to our shows and be like, ‘We love your band. Hopefully someday, we can do something.’ A number of labels were in a bidding war, which escalated for a year and a half, to get us. That’s why we didn’t put an album out: we were waiting for the right home. Metal Blade stepped up with a really gracious, honest offer. Right now, we’re the top priority on the label. The president of the company just gave me a call for no apparent reason. It feels good."

The first single from Oncoming is "The Great Dividers," which splits the difference between the primal hardcore of Hatebreed and the sophisticated metal of Shadows Fall. Directed by Dale Resteghini, the video is shaping up to be a summer staple on MTV2’s Headbangers Ball. "We grabbed this awesome location in New York City," says Susi, "and we put an ad on our Web site for kids to come out. They shut down the street, it was amazing. The video ties in with the main premise of the album: it’s kids being held back, wanting to rock. Eventually, they just break out and have a good time."

Unearth frontman Trevor Phipps is a ruthless screamer with no soft spot for melody. But like Hatebreed’s Jamey Jasta, he doesn’t let that stop him from coming up with memorable lines. On "The Great Dividers," his catchiest diatribe — "Take over the world/Does hate mean freedom?" — suggests that the band have joined the anti-war camp. "We’ve never been a political band," Susi points out. "With our previous albums, it’s always been looking at the positive side of life. But there’s a lot of violence all over the world. People need to start making the right decisions or we’re all going to be wiped off the face of the earth. This album is geared toward, ‘We’re on the wrong path, and we need to change our ways.’ "

Along with "The Great Dividers," Oncoming standouts like "Bloodlust of the Human Condition" and "False Idols" find Unearth trafficking in the same themes of sociopolitical unrest that defined the 1980s thrash heyday of Metallica and Megadeth. The band’s musical attack is also steeped in metal history: Susi and guitarist Buz McGrath don’t skimp on sleek harmonies or frenetic solos, and they go soft in style on the mournful ballad "Aries." But unlike many of their metalcore brethren, they don’t have time for radio-friendly hooks. "Everybody’s always asking me, ‘Dude, why don’t you have more choruses,’ " Susi says. "We have metal parts that are just ripping, and we have traditional hardcore breakdowns — that’s enough for me. This is our best effort to date. There’s rock parts, there’s a song with piano, there’s ambient stuff — it’s a good mix. People who try to be commercial are just fooling themselves."

Oncoming was produced by Killswitch Engage’s Adam Dutkiewicz, who also put his stamp on current discs by his own band and All That Remains. With the notable exception of the mosh favorite "Endless," which first appeared on disc in 2002, the bulk of the material was written over the past six months. "When we were conducting business with other labels, we would tell them our album was pretty much done. Which was obviously a lie," Susi laughs. "We toured constantly throughout that period of time, so there wasn’t much writing going on. Once we signed to Metal Blade, we just started to crack down. When we came together, we remembered how cool it was to write with each other. It was like going to a class reunion."

To judge by all the buzz Killswitch Engage and Shadows Fall generated on Ozzfest 2003, Unearth have an exciting summer ahead of them. With fellow East Coast wrecking crews Hatebreed and Every Time I Die joining them in the line-up, this year’s second stage might be the heaviest ever. "Ozzfest is going to be great," Susi enthuses. "I might even get drunk with a bottle of JD and ride my bike through the park every day. Adam D. said last year, that’s all he did: he grabbed a ten-speed and started crashing into stuff. I’m happy that there aren’t too many new-metal bands on the tour this year. There’s a lot of really good bands that we’ve always toured with. We’re actually sharing a bus with Every Time I Die. We’re a really tight group, so we just figured we’d save some money and roll together."

In the July 2004 issue of AP magazine, there’s a feature on Susi that focuses on his other musical passion, after playing guitar and writing songs: producing records. When he’s not on the road, he interns at Blue Jay, the venerable studio on the outskirts of Boston that was recently purchased (and given an expensive makeover) by Backstreet Boy Kevin Richardson. But he usually works out of his own home studio on the North Shore, and his first big project, Beyond the Embrace’s Insect Song (Metal Blade), was released a few months back. "That album was completely done at my house. There are a lot of great albums that were done at people’s houses. I’m a minimalist: I want to find good, organic tones and find them within reasonable confines. Beyond the Embrace are a classic metal band. But if you were to give me a sludge band or a grind band or whatever, I’ve listened to enough music where I know what something should sound like."

When Susi calls Beyond the Embrace a "classic metal band," he’s talking about six guys with long hair and leather jackets whose music will proudly never be mistaken for hardcore. When it comes to street cred, it doesn’t hurt that they hail from New Bedford, one of the grittiest towns in the region. On their 2002 Metal Blade debut, Against the Elements, the band offered an equally fleet-fingered alternative to the crossover-happy metal of their Massachusetts peers. They have yet to appear on MTV2 or Ozzfest, but recent months have found them on the road with genre faves Prong and Iced Earth.

Insect Song marks the first time Beyond the Embrace have worked with an outside producer. "The pre-production process was all new to us," frontman Shawn Gallagher reveals in the band’s current bio. "We had been playing the songs for years when we went into the studio for Against the Elements, so we didn’t really need a producer to help us figure out where they needed to go. With this one, Ken really helped us trim down our songs, find the best tones, and nail the breakdowns. He also helped bring out some different sides of Beyond the Embrace."

Like Unearth, Beyond the Embrace are indebted to the In Flames school of thrash revivalism, and their three-guitar line-up allows for extra heaviness and intricacy. What sets Insect Song apart is Gallagher’s voice, a melodic growl that borrows from Metallica and Pantera. That wasn’t always the case: on Elements, he spent most of his time screaming and let the guitars provide the color. But this album’s opening "Fleshengine Breakdown," with its thrilling stoner-mosh hybrid, makes it clear that singing is his priority now.

Most of the songs on the disc are about personal demons: "Don’t know what’s right or wrong/Been drinking all night long/Guess I was doomed right from the start," Gallagher wails on "Fleshengine Breakdown." The title track equates conformity with death and makes room for a stampeding breakdown that bears Susi’s mark. On the spacy instrumental "Ashes," the group trade in their usual battle gear for acoustic guitars and a somber synth backdrop. Metal geeks will go nuts for the guitar solos, which are as speedy and prevalent here as they are on a Shadows Fall album. And when Beyond the Embrace pay lip service to hardcore on the closing "Within" ("Can’t stop, I can’t stop/The bleeding in my head"), it feels extraneous. Every scene needs its purists, and these dudes have all the right moves.

Unearth perform this Friday, July 2, at the Palladium, 261 Main Street in Worcester; call (508) 797-9696. They’ll also be along for the ride when Ozzfest hits the Tweeter Center in Mansfield next Monday, July 12; call (617) 228-6000.