UNEARTH – Interview with Vocalist Trevor Phipps

UNEARTH’s career seems taken directly from their song lyrics. The Boston, Massachusetts band has always written positive lyrics with empowering messages. UNEARTH began as an underground band, their energetic, hard-hitting performance helped make a name for them in the Boston hardcore scene. They gigged continuously, roughing it out on the road in small vans, playing venues the size of a shoe box. Over time, the persistent touring paid off, as Metal Blade discovered the band a few years after their formation. The band signed with the illustrious label and released “The Oncoming Storm” in 2004.

Around the same time of their Metal Blade debut, the band took to the road as part of Ozzfest ’04. Since that monumental tour, UNEARTH has toured nearly every inch of the globe. Their 2006 release, “III: In The Eyes of Fire” further solidified their status as a top echelon metal band in today’s rock scene. Recently, the band released their first DVD “Alive From the Apocalypse.” This career-perspective DVD contains live footage, videos, and a comprehensive documentary. Metal Centre spoke with lead vocalist, Trevor Phipps over the phone about this DVD release and their forthcoming album.

How do you feel about your DVD, “Alive From the Apocalypse?”

I think the whole band feels great about the DVD. It shows what the band is about live. The documentary showcases nine-plus years of the band, and all the ups and downs we’ve endured. I think it represents the band very well.

Why did you pick the Pomona show?

That’s one of our favorite venues in the country. With the band being from Massachusetts, the obvious choice would be to play at Boston, Mass. We’ve done a couple shoots there. We did our video for “The Glorious Nightmare” there. We recorded at a couple metal fests there, so the band didn’t want to do the same ole, same ole. Pomona is a cool place. It has a corner stage, so it gives maximum access to the crowd when filming; you can actually reach out to the crowd and have fun.

How much creative control did you have over the DVD?

The live show is just us on stage. That is pretty much the standard UNEARTH show. That’s what the band is all about on stage. As far as the documentary, that is footage we have compiled throughout the years. We’ve always had a digital or video camera with us out on the road. Our tour manager compiled stuff of our fans and tour footage as well. On top of that, the guy that did the DVD has been in the scene for a long time, and has gotten footage of our shows and festivals since 2001. There is a whole compilation of footage to pick from. We told our own story, had interviews with each members and there were bands that wanted to tell their story about touring with UNEARTH. It kind of put itself together. We had our own comments and personal ideas that we put into it as well.

Your guitarist, Ken Susi mixed the DVD. What other projects has he worked on before your video?

I think he did our portion of the “Sounds of the Underground” DVD on the special edition of our last album. He actually has his own studio. He has bands come in and record with him. His most recent project is a band on Ferret called LIGEIA. He has worked with BURN IN SILENCE. He has his foot in the door to be a producer. We have a free studio to record in. It’s a good opportunity for him. We kind of went into it with the thought that if he did a good job, we would use it and use him again. If we didn’t like the job he did, we could go elsewhere. We think he did a pretty good job. We had no real complaints, so we moved forward with the mix.

The extra, live footage shows you in front of two, enormous crowds in Germany at the Full Force Fest and in Japan at Loud Park Festival. What was it like playing in front of such large audiences? Does hearing the cheers from such a large audience energize your performance?

It kind of does, yeah. It was crazy at first because the band is used to playing clubs or semi-descent venues, and then we were thrust in front of 15,000 people. The first time we played in front of that many people was our first show on Ozzfest 2004. There were 6,000 fans. The rush from all those thrashing bodies was great. There were 15,000-plus fans at the Loud Park show in Japan and 30,000-plus at the Full Force fest in Germany. I had a huge butterfly feeling in my stomach. It fired me up! I still prefer playing the small venues where I can jump into the crowd and crowd surf, although that is a great feeling having that many people watch your band, seeing what you are about, checking out the stuff you play. It’s a really good feeling!

The documentary portion of the DVD portrays a band that likes to joke and have fun, a much different portrayal than the intense, aggression shown in your live performances and heard on your albums. Do people ever expect you to have the same angry, ass-kicking attitude off stage?

Some people do, especially from me. If they get a chance to meet me, they are really surprised. I’m not at all what they expected because I’m not all pissed off, I’m not a raging dick head. I think screaming is kind of my thing. It’s my way of getting out any type of aggression I might have. We’re all laid back dudes who play rock-n-roll and have fun. It’s the best job in the world for us. We have fun; we can’t complain. We’re all human, so we all have our own angst inside. We take out that aggression onstage. I think we are lucky to have that kind of format to put it out there. I think we still have fun onstage, though. Ken is always doing beer bongs. Buzz is always jumping off of tall, large objects. They crowd surf to the bar and drink from the bar. We played a show a month ago where the back of the venue is a Starbucks. Buzz jumped off the stage, ran to the back of the venue and played on top of the bar at Starbucks. There is a certain type of humor in our live shows, but for the most part, it is aggressive and angry.

Certain parts, especially the individual spotlights, are hilarious. One part that cracked me up was the part about Ken’s urine fetish. When did you first notice Ken had a thing for pee?

He’s kind of fucked up sexually, anyways. He likes bizarre crap. I don’t know what he gets into. Everyone likes weird stuff, but he’s a wack job. He’s been weird since I can remember. I think the first time I actually saw him pee on a girl was in Europe. He’s talked about it for a while, and I think he had a couple girlfriends that were into water sports. I don’t want to go into it too much; it’s too weird.

Besides Ron Jeremy, would you say Buzz has the world’s most famous nuts?

I would say so [laughs]. For a small dude—he’s probably five-five, at the most—he’s got the biggest pair of testicles I have ever seen! He’s not afraid to break them out. I’ve probably seen them about fifty times a year since we started touring. I think people don’t believe him, but with this DVD, I think he will get more appreciation. He will blow them away with his giant nut sack.

They are blocked out.

Yeah, they are kind of blurry, but I think you can get a general idea. The one on the scale in Japan kind of gives you an idea. That was actually a picture that we did have from Loud Park. That was at the hotel the night we played after the show. We were partying, drinking, having a good time and he pulled his nuts out and weighed them. That was in Japan in the lobby of the hotel. There were people walking around. No one really seemed to care.

Can you think of another funny story that was not included in the film?

We have a ton of stories from the road, but I can’t recall one right now. The band has fun. We party every day. We don’t take anything for granted. We just go out there and have a good time. We are cool with all the bands we toured with; I don’t think any are our enemy. We have a lot of fun. We have playing heavy metal, rock-n-roll. It is a dream come true for us.

You announced UNEARTH is due in the studio in June. How many songs have you written?

We have about six or seven. There is still about a month and a half until we enter the studio. We have no shows for the next six weeks. We’ll go in there and practice a couple times a week. We’re gonna get all our ideas out on the table, try to finish this album and get it into people’s hands by October. We’ll have ten or eleven songs. I think over eleven is overkill. We tossed around doing nine because a bunch of classic records have nine songs. “Reign in Blood” has nine songs. A bunch of other great records have nine songs. I think the goal is to at least do ten.

With each coming full-length, UNEARTH seems to move away from hardcore and deeper in a full-on metal sound. Will this be the case with your next album?

I don’t think that anything we do is intentional; I just think the band is growing. We’re not really forcing anything on our sound. What is coming out now is not as speed-driven as the last album. We have a different drummer and are moving forward. It will be more crushing, with a hard-hitting vibe. The tempos will be more along the lines of our last two full-lengths. People can call our heavier stuff, the stuff with the breakdowns a hardcore style, but I don’t really care. The band is just here to write stuff that we like, and to make it as heavy as possible. I don’t think that any member of our band cares about categories. I think people find it easy to put things into categories, especially the media. In the 80s, metal was put with metal. People put MOTLEY CRUE next to SLAYER. The two styles were very different, but people liked music. In junior high school, I liked METALLICA and I liked MOTLEY CRUE. The band is just out here trying to write tunes that we all enjoy. If people it enjoy it too, we would be happy to play it for them.

You had fewer breakdowns on the last album than “The Oncoming Storm.” It was more speed-oriented, and you had fewer clean vocals. What elements will define the next one?

This record won’t be as fast as the last record. The last record we really focused on the songs being fast, more thrashy. We grew up with thrash bands like TESTAMENT, MEGADETH, and ANTHRAX. It was done as a sort of tribute to those bands we grew up with. It was also done to go against the grain of what was happening at the time. Back in ’06, when we did that record, bands were starting to really focus on doing pop, clean vocals. They all wanted the KILLSWITCH ENGAGE clean vocals. Some bands did it well and sold records. Some bands just flopped. That being said, the underground is rolling with a bunch of great, young, hard-hitting bands. SUICIDE SILENCE, AS BLOOD RUNS BLACK, JOB FOR A COWBOY: the list just goes on. It’s great to see young bands playing the right stuff. They don’t care about pop vocals. They are going out there and writing good heavy grooves. It kind of takes the pressure off us. That was the point of the last record. We wanted to prove we could write a heavy record and still sell 200,000 copies worldwide and over 100,000 in the U.S., and still have a career. We are not a Platinum band, but we still have a career. We still call this our job. That was the intention of the last album. This one we are focusing more on writing the best overall songs. This time it is less focused on speed; the songs come more naturally. We will have some melodic parts, but you won’t hear any pop choruses.

Can you give our readers more details about your new drummer?

We’ve known Derrick for a long time. He plays in SEEMLESS and KINGDOM OF SORROW. We helped us write a couple songs on “The Oncoming Storm.” Mike Justin joined in 2003. He was in his band called BACKSTABBERS INC. He had to do a tour with them. We were busy writing our album. Derrick sat in for a month or so while Mike was on tour and helped write a couple of tunes. Derrick has worked with us before, and he has been friends with us for years. When we had to let Mike Justin go, while on the DIMMU BORGIR tour, we were on tour right up the road from Gene Hoglan, so we had him come in and do a fill in a few dates with us. After that, Derrick came in to be our drummer. He has done every tour ever since. He toured with us in Europe, all the touring in the fall, he did our past tour. He helped us write songs for this album. He is a great drummer! He is not 100% in the band yet, but he is very close. We are probably going to wait until after the record is recorded. We need to figure out some of the business bullshit. We’ve been a band for over nine years, so we have all the business crap that we have to deal with such as recording royalties and all that horse shit. Right now we don’t want to deal with that because we are writing and recording a record. I expect him to be in the band sometime in July or August. We can move forward from there.

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