Shadows Fall
Shadows Fall (barely) survive major label land and live to tell the tale on Retribution
A decade after signing on to thrash melodically with Shadows Fall in the midst of the nü-metal dark ages, Brian Fair gazes out upon verdant heavy metal pastures sloping into picturesque technical death valleys set beneath a pale gray sky (we shall arise), and he is pleased. “I did not think I would see kids at shows in denim vests and white high-top Reeboks ever again,” the fantastically be-dreaded singer muses in a tone wistful enough to suggest he might still be suspended in a prolonged pinch-me state of wonder.
“When we were starting out, thrash metal and the guitar solo were all but forgotten art forms; the ‘Hey, let’s get a DJ!’ and ‘Jump the fuck up!’ type stuff was taking over,” Fair continues. “Shadows Fall had no agenda of success because success just didn’t seem possible, which is as it should be—if you have a business plan before you have a sound… that’s just terrible. We had accepted we were going to be this tiny metal band playing basements, so it was as shocking to us as anyone to see people coming back around to this music. Now there are kids at our shows in Death Angel and Testament T-shirts, which is so crazy and inspiring. They’re doing their homework!”
If the expectation is “world unexpectedly turns in band’s stylistic direction / hard-luck band enjoys previously unfathomable success / band, annoyed by comparatively easy road of genre young guns, engages in high-falutin’ squawking about ‘evolution’ that turns out to be code for ‘pretentious wuss-opus’”—well, then Shadows Fall’s latest is more destroyer of expectations than destroyer of senses. Retribution is not only not the band’s “black” record; it is a surprising hairpin turn back toward the ferocity after 2007’s more heavy rock-oriented Threads of Life.
“Right out of the gate, live and loud in the practice space, it was like, ‘Oh, OK… we’re angry!’” Fair laughs. “It snowballed from there. [Guitarist] Matt [Bachand] was busting out his old death metal cassettes. Jon [Donais] kept coming up with riffs that were just… nasty. This is still Shadows Fall—we’re always going to have melody, we’re always going to have acoustic moments. Individually, we’re the most schizophrenic music fans ever. Our common ground is everything from melodic death metal like Carcass and At the Gates all the way to Journey and Def Leppard, and we work hard to balance those influences. But from the beginning, it was obvious Retribution was going to be on the more aggressive end of our sound.”
As the difference in tone between the titles Threads of Life (we’re all in this together!) and Retribution (y’all muthafuckas gonna pay!) suggests, the latter is a lyrically and thematically darker enterprise. “I’m a pretty positive guy. I always try to leave a glimmer of hope in a song—even if I have to focus on the negative to bring attention to it,” Fair explains. “The music for Retribution ruled out any flowery imagery, but I can’t just write angry nonsense. If I’m going to scream my heart out every night, I have to draw deeply from personal experience and philosophy and things I care about. An album is a permanent document that will follow me for the rest of my life. I take it seriously.”
When pop-sociologist Malcolm Gladwell declared in last year’s Outliers that proficiency in a trade required 10,000 hours of practice, the numerology felt a bit arbitrary. Fair can nevertheless confirm that 10 years of slugging it out in the metal scene can pay dividends. “There is a confidence that comes from how long we’ve been doing this, which is probably tough to get any other way,” he says. “The more you write and perform as a band, the closer you come to closing the gap between the original inspiration and its purest possible expression.”
Fair’s endorsement of striving for the ever-elusive pure expression shouldn’t be construed as a flogging for anodyne perfection, however. “I grew up listening to 7-inch hardcore records that sounded like they were recorded in a garbage can, and it was awesome,” he says. “These days you can have every kick and snare snug in its little place. You can have every vocal Auto-Tuned to robotic perfection. Pro Tools metal—it’s almost its own genre. If you had tried to Auto-Tune Robert Plant’s vocals, the computer would have exploded! We’ll use technology to our advantage, but we’re not really interested in beating the human element of music into nonexistence. A lot of the time, the human flaws and imperfections are what the real intensity and unique beauty grows out of.”
Aside from Shadows Fall’s remarkable ability to successfully navigate the uncertain, sometimes deadly waters of the record industry—the band has self-released (Somber Eyes to the Sky, 1997), earned their indie label bars and a Grammy nomination while selling more than 300,000 copies of The War Within (2004) on Century Media, ran with the majors with the Atlantic-backed joint Threads of Life, and now is releasing Retribution on its own Everblack Industries, backed by both one the bigger indies (Ferret) and a major (Warner)—Fair has a few bits of wisdom to share with aspiring Hessians thinking of dipping a toe in the fevered swamps of the thrash metalworks.
“There’s only been one Metallica, there will only ever be one Metallica and you are not going to get rich playing metal,” the singer advises. Also: “At the end of the day, people will see what’s for real when you get on stage. That is the ultimate barometer for metal, and metal fans see through any bullshit. If you can’t pull off something onstage that’s on your record, you better find a way. Unless you want to be dodging bottles of piss.”
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