Into Eternity – Hope To Tour Nonstop In 2007
The following article was originally posted over at MTV.com:
One recent morning while on Gigantour 2006, Stu Block realized he’s got it pretty good. The frontman’s band, Canadian melodic death-metallers INTO ETERNITY, were on the road with the second annual installment of Dave Mustaine’s traveling circus of brutality, which also features MEGADETH, OPETH, LAMB OF GOD and ARCH ENEMY. Every night, Block went to sleep on his band’s tour bus with a stomach full of catered gourmet cuisine.
“It was like, ‘Man, it can only go downhill from here,’ ” Block joked. “The NEVERMORE guys,” who were on the first Gigantour in 2005, “told us it was an amazing experience, especially the catering. And it was amazing. How can you complain about going out with MEGADETH and all these other awesome bands, doing arenas with catering? It was a super wicked experience on all levels.”
Gigantour, which wrapped October 8 in Orlando, Florida, also helped INTO ETERNITY get the word out about The Scattering of Ashes, their fourth, recently released LP. While INTO ETERNITY have no additional touring plans at the moment, Block said it’s possible they’ll hit the road with NEVERMORE and SCAR SYMMETRY in early 2007. Either way, next year will bring nonstop touring for the guys or at least they hope.
“We’d love to be on Ozzfest, but we haven’t taken steps towards getting on it yet,” he said. “It would be a great opportunity for us, and it was so cool seeing [fellow Canucks] STRAPPING YOUNG LAD on it last year. I was so stoked, because I have known those guys since day one, and it was a great thing for them. At this point, it’s just a pipe dream [for us]. But who knows? These things sometimes come true. All I will say is … we’d be more than happy to do it, for sure.”
With Scattering the first album to feature Block on vocals in stores, and INTO ETERNITY fresh from Gigantour, Ozzfest might be a perfect fit for them. And the album is a punishing triumph, considering the rapid-fire pace under which it was recorded.
“We did have a time restriction, so for a couple of songs, I’d go into the studio and I’d never even heard these tracks before, but I had to lay vocals over it,” Block recalled. “It almost seemed more natural, and it was really good because I could do things on the fly and it was working, and we could get really creative with it. The main goal for us was to put together a record … that could be reproduced live. Some of the older material is so complex, the material would sound just less full. On this record, we wanted to go more aggressive and stick to two-part vocal harmonies on the choruses and some of the verses in a couple of the songs that [guitarist] Tim [Roth] and I do. We just went into it with a real open mind.”
While on the Gigantour, Block and the rest of INTO ETERNITY forged close bonds with most of the bands on the bill but walked away from the trek with a genuine friend in LAMB OF GOD guitarist Will Adler. “At one point, while we were in the Midwest, he dressed up like Dave Mustaine and was walking around backstage with a red wig on, a house coat and a glass of wine,” he said. “He was just acting like Dave and meeting people as Dave. It was hilarious. But then it would dawn on these people that he wasn’t Dave, and they’d be like, ‘Who the hell are you?’ Will’s just a funny guy. He has a tattoo on his stomach of a plate of chicken, grits and cornbread in gravy, so that whenever he’s in a foreign country, he just has to point to his stomach when he wants to order food.”
Next month, INTO ETERNITY’s video for “Severe Emotional Distress” will make its debut on MTV2’s “Headbangers Ball.” Directed by Kevin Wildt (Napalm Death, the Warriors), the clip features a gorgeous woman amid a complex and disturbing story line. While half the clip is just the band rockin’ out in a bedroom, the rest of it focuses on “this girl and her mother, and they’re going through lots of problems, and she has scars on her arms from cutting herself,” Block explained. “The premise is self-mutilation as a means to relieve pain from their lives, and it’s a very powerful song and an even more powerful video.”
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