Unearth Have Friends In Slipknot And Pantera

05/12/08 7:30pm

by Andre Mihsin (CHARTattack)

Massachusetts metal act Unearth recently released the two-DVD Alive From The Apocalypse, and it’s a hot item in Canada.

One week after its March 18 release, Alive From The Apocalypse was certified gold in Canada. Unearth singer Trevor Phipps is proud of both the live DVD and the band’s recent cross-Canada tour.

"We're all stoked about that big time. Canada has always been good to us. I think we hit eastern Canada for the first time in, I think it was, late '99, and they always treated us well up there. Every show was good. It seems like we were respected right out of the gate. And every tour we did from there on out seemed to get better and bigger each time around. Our last tour we did in October of this past year we did a cross-Canada run and every show was packed or sold-out.

"It was our first full headlining tour across Canada. We've done a bunch of headlining shows in Montreal, Quebec City, Ottawa and Toronto — and the cities around Toronto like St. Catharines and Guelph — but this was our first cross-Canada tour headlining. It was awesome."

While the DVD’s centrepiece is a 40-minute concert filmed in California last fall, the documentary on disc two is far more interesting than the boobs 'n' booze footage that make up a lot of band DVD releases. Instead, it's an honest look at the band's history and features comments from Unearth's peers and some of the biggest names in metal today, including Slipknot's Corey Taylor, current Divine Heresy/ex-Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares and former Pantera drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott.

"That means a lot to us," said Phipps. "Just to have the respect of people like that. To have guys like Corey Taylor and especially Vinnie Paul having good words to say about us, I got the chills and was just stoked about it all.

"I think that because we've done such a diverse touring schedule over the years that we have toured with a lot of different style of bands, so it gave us an open door to interview the guys from Madball, Pantera/Damageplan and guys from all different walks of the hard music scene. I think it shows the crossover appeal this band does have with our metal."

Unearth will return to the studio this summer to record the follow-up to 2006’s III: In The Eyes Of Fire. Phipps says the band have six or seven songs in pre-production and plan to start working in June to with producer Adam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage, who helmed Unearth's 2004 breakthrough, The Oncoming Storm. They’re eyeing an October release.

"This next record is an important one for us," says Phipps. "We've gotten to a certain point where we need to take it to that next step.

”The last record was a statement record where we were trying to prove to the masses and prove to ourselves and prove to the fans out there that bands can be heavy and not have to put in the Killswitch-type pop singing parts and still sell records and still have a career, and I think we proved that point.

"On this record, we can focus now more on writing more complete songs instead of just going out there and having the fastest, heaviest thrash record we can. We're all happy with that last record, but with this record there's going to be more grooves, a bit slower tempos. It'll still have the speed of course, but it'll be more a mixture of the last album and The Oncoming Storm. It'll have some more complete tunes, not just an in-your-face thrash record."