They've toured Europe, played festivals and spent eight out of 12 months on the road in recent years. So how come when Pizza Lucé announced After the Burial as the second-to-last act performing at its all-local block party on Saturday, the response from party regulars was a resounding, "Who?!"
"They're a bit of a surprise," admitted Pizza Lucé's marketing manager Corey Sax. "Our new space will be big enough, people can get away from the stage if they're afraid."
Oh, be afraid. Be very afraid. There are ample — and, more specifically, guitar-ampful — reasons that After the Burial will wind up being one of the most shocking and memorable appearances in the Lucé block party's 10-year history.
Last year the festival went silent as organizers sought a bigger home for the event. They found it in a parking lot across the street from their downtown Minneapolis eatery. With the harder, concrete- and warehouse-lined digs comes an appropriately heavier band.
After the Burial brandishes a brutal, harrowing, extreme brand of thrash metal that will even make fellow Lucé noisemakers Bloodnstuff come off like pussycats (to say nothing of poppier headliners Motion City Soundtrack).
The band's story is akin to Motion City's: It has a good national record deal but is better known outside its hometown. One reason is that it tours so much. When not on the road, its members split up into different cities (ogre-voiced singer Anthony Notarmaso lives near San Francisco).
Guitarists Justin Lowe and Trent Hafdahl formed After the Burial nearly a decade ago when they were fresh out of White Bear Lake High School. They fashioned themselves after Pantera, the Deftones and Slipknot — but somehow managed to find new ways of sounding deeper and deadlier.
Case in point: Lowe spent a few minutes telling me about his and Hafdahl's unique guitar and amplifier setup. They play eight-string guitars specially designed by Japanese guitar maker Ibanez, with whom they have an endorsement deal. The two extra strings are thicker and thus bring them down into bass-guitar territory — which, in turn, requires bassist Lee Foral to use strings about as thick as a gondola cable.
