by erin thursby scopes1925@msn.com
WHAT: Unearth
WHEN: May 30th
WHERE: House of Blues, in Lake Buena Vista Florida
Unearth is underground no longer. Formed in '98, this Massachusetts metalcore core band has been favorite underground band for years. With the usual dual guitars, screaming vocals and a dash of political lyrics, they've cultivated a loyal fan base, though they've only released four albums. It was the '04 album The Oncoming Storm, that caused the industry to sit up and take notice.
By then the band had finally coalesced, after a number of shake-up and a run of bad luck. The band had weathered the theft of all their equipment by a roadie, multiple van breakdowns and a band members dropping out the band. The most talked about band member who left in 2003, is Mike Rudberg, who will be forever remembered for freaking out during a concert and striping naked. He played the drums naked for the entire concert and quit the band when he was told what he'd done the next day. Most of the band's changing line-up was due to more mundane reasons. When I asked guitarist Ken Susi about it during our EU interview, he replied that "before [2003] we were all trying to be in a metal band and we needed to make money, so we had jobs, obligations."
Susi even worked a six-month gig at the IRS to pay the bills, eventually moving into the arena of the dreaded temp job along with band mate Trevor Phipps to accommodate the on-again, off-again lifestyle of a metal band.
"We basically ate sh*t and worked for other people that we were definitely more qualified than, but we sucked it up, for the music."
After going to a rock concert at the tender age of nine and seeing "maybe thirty-thousand girls just keel over and start crying" over the band, Ken Susi knew that he wanted to be a musician from that point on. "All that vagina is just very tempting," said Susi.
The band's lately gotten a further boost by playing the title song for the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie.
"One day my manager called me and said that there was an opportunity to be on the Aqua Teen Hunger Force soundtrack…obviously we're huge fans of that show and we were lucky enough to write a song for it…and they made it the main track of the movie…I think Meatwad is probably my favorite character."
The band had even grown in popularity enough to have its share of slightly unbalanced groupies. Susi says that one particular fan of his is especially devoted.
"I have a…[fan] right now who calls my phone once a day, sometimes five times a day, just to tell me how her day went…I don't even know how she got my number…She says she can't wait to meet me and that she's not a groupie…She sounds like 12 years old, but I think it's pretty funny."
Unfortunately for that devoted fan, Susi is taken and is planning to move in with his girlfriend just after his tour.
If you want to see Unearth, don't call Ken Susi's cell phone five times a day; just go to his concert at the House of Blues in Lake Buena Vista Florida on the May 30th.
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