| Anterior | |
|---|---|
| Origin | Tredegar, South Wales, United Kingdom |
| Genres | Melodic death metal[1] Metalcore[1] Thrash metal[2] Progressive metal[2] |
| Years active | 2003−present |
| Labels | Metal Blade |
| Associated acts | Mendeed |
| Website | www.myspace.com/Anterior |
| Members | |
| Luke Davies Leon Kemp Steven Nixon James Britton James Cook |
|
| Past members | |
| Ross Andrews Andrew Cairns |
|
Anterior is a five-piece metal band from Tredegar, Wales. They are currently signed to Metal Blade Records, although they were also approached by Manowar's Joey DeMaio. They have released one album through Metal Blade called This Age of Silence.
Contents |
The band was formed back in 2003 when a group of teenage friends decided to take their music abilities seriously. Frontman Luke Davies stated in an interview with Metal Hammer magazine:
"We'd known each other in school but we put the band together in December 2003. That's when we got serious and started writing our own material and looking for gigs outside of our local area. For the next three years we just practiced regularly, writing new songs whilst doing one-off gigs around the country; just trying to gain as much experience as we could. We decided to take some time off from gigging and concentrated on writing better material, and we recorded another demo."
Originally a four-piece line up, they began playing covers of the bands that inspired them to play and immediately adopted a serious approach to music. After realizing their combined potential they started to compose their own music and style and set out to record a demo of their first original songs. They completed the self-funded disc in just a few days in the summer of 2004 and started sending copies to local promoters in search of shows.
The demo gained the band many shows in the area and many promoters had great interest in their music. Every show that Anterior played they were turning more heads and soon started getting support slots for many established bands. Still playing their very first songs and selling their demo at shows, they landed an opening slot for DragonForce and more shows started happening. Soon after, Anterior were playing alongside bands such as The Black Dahlia Murder, Himsa, and 3 Inches Of Blood, to name a few. As the band continued growing they started writing new material with the goal of recording a studio quality disc. When the new material was ready Anterior headed to Sonic One studios with producer Tim Hamill to record their first real studio effort. Once completed, the band had a new disc with their best material to date and were looking for distribution. They put two of the new songs on their MySpace page and it attracted immediate attention from listeners worldwide, which included managers interested in taking the band on. One of the managers offered Anterior a provisional period to work together on finding the band a record label. They received several offers from different labels over the period and finally signed a worldwide deal with Metal Blade Records. Now with such an established label behind them, the band started work on their debut album. Anterior again wanted to work with Tim Hamill, having already recorded with him before, and the album writing was underway.
During the writing process, the band hit a block when vocalist Luke Davies encountered medical problems forcing him to no longer be able to play guitar. During the recording all guitars were recorded by guitarist Leon Kemp, as Davies' condition was more permanent than the band had once thought. They overcame the complications and recorded 10 tracks, 9 being original songs and the tenth a Racer X cover. The album was named This Age of Silence. Just days after the albums completion the band were finishing their UK tour with 3 Inches of Blood. Anticipating the album release, Anterior continued to keep playing live with the help of a friend on rhythm guitar duties and Luke just singing.
In May 2007, bassist James Britton left the band due to personal reasons, but re-joined the band in September 2007.
The band was now sharing stages with bands such as As I Lay Dying and Sanctity. The album was released June 12, 2007 and they embarked on a UK tour with label mates The Black Dahlia Murder and The Ocean. The album was critically appraised by various magazines such as Kerrang!, Metal Hammer and Rocksound, as well as online magazines "Room 13" and "Power Play".
With vocalist Luke still unable to play, the band were looking for a full time guitarist to become an official part of the band. During many of their shows, Anterior had played with the Scottish metalcore band Mendeed many times and had a very close relationship with them. The summer of 2007 saw the breakup of Mendeed and the addition of their lead guitarist, Steven Nixon, to Anterior, completing the band as a new five-piece line up.
The band has been touring extensively. On February 25, 2008 they completed their five-day Indian tour where they headlined "AVALANCHE" - the rock show at Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology[1], New Delhi, with Dutch melodic thrash band Detonation and also performed at East Wind Festival. The band then embarked on a European tour with Himsa and DevilDriver. The band also supported Dying Fetus on a UK tour in June 2008. The band were also the sole support for the two UK/Ireland shows in June with Children Of Bodom on the 11th in Dublin and the 12th in Glasgow.
On March 31, 2008, it was announced that drummer Ross Andrews would be leaving the band to pursue an alternative career path once a suitable replacement could be found. However, he left at the end of 2008 before any replacement was arranged.
On January 29, 2009, it was announced through the bands myspace, that a replacement drummer had been found in Andrew Cairns, and that he too would be contributing to the new album due some time in 2010.
On February 4, 2010, it was announced through the band's MySpace that another drummer had been announced by the name of James Cook to contribute to the new album.
On August 26, 2011, after much delay, Echoes of The Fallen was released.