We spoke to Unearth frontman Trevor Phipps about their notorious live shows and got some advice on what to always do, and what under no circumstances to ever do! Trust us, they should know!

Unearth will be playing with Lamb Of God and Dimmu Borgir on the Defenders Of The Faith II tour from Feb 11-15 – Get tickets (Birmingham, London, Glasgow remaining).

DON’T… MISJUDGE YOUR STAGE MOVES
Once I got knocked out by Ken [Susi, guitarist]. He was chopping down with the guitar, I was headbanging, he caught me right in the soft spot on top of my head and split my head open. I got dizzy immediately and fell backwards. [John] Slo [Maggard, bassist] caught me with his legs. I woke up being pulled off the stage with blood just pouring down my face. Last year I hurt my foot jumping off stage. I mis-judged how far it was and landed directly on my right heel. For the rest of the tour I was limping on stage because I had a bone contusion in my right heel. That’s a bone bruise which happens right before it breaks. I was sore for two months.

See what Dimmu’s Silenoz said about the Defenders Of The Faith II Tour.

DO… BE YOURSELF ONSTAGE
Really going for it live isn’t something we ‘put on’, we’re not putting on an act or anything, it’s just what we feel when we play… “We do our best not to let our performance slip and if the crowd likes it, that’s even better. It’s cool to at least think that people come to our shows expecting us to be good, have a good time and have the crowd join us in that good time.

DON’T… BE STRAIGHTEDGE
I didn’t really start drinking on tour until the end of 2002. I just never before shows. I’d heard that drinking was bad for your vocal chords, but once when I was at a gig in Boulder Colorado with a friend, had a few beers, and had the best show of my life. I was like, ‘wow that was great’.

DO… KNOW YOUR LIMITS
A few drinks just kind of took the edge off it. So I kept on testing the boundaries and eventually one day I got far too drunk. I remember Buzz (McGrath, guitarist) said to me after the show, ‘Hey Phipps, if you don’t want to suck again don’t drink that much before your set’. I was like ok, so now I keep it to like four shots of something just to take the edge off – it does actually make your performance a little better. If you have too many you will suck; you may think you’re awesome but you do suck. It’s trial and error. I think now I’ve fine tuned it now to the perfect dose.

DON’T… GET BORED ON BIG TOURS
The big tours are worse for over indulging because you play you’re set during the day and get bored after that. They give you beer, and Jagermeister usually promotes the tours and they’re always there with the Jager so you just go there and drink. You end up being a mess each night. We played Rock AM Ring and Rock In The Park in 2006 – I forget which was first – but the first one was the big show where we partied all night with Slipknot. Paul (Antignai, fill-in drummer) wasn’t drinking so he made me drink his Crown Royal shots for him. I blacked out that night, got sick and woke up at 3pm the next day. There was vomit on the floor of the bus and I had to take the stage at 4:30pm. I was not in any mood whatsoever for that.

Lamb Of God will be out with Unearth, here’s our track-by-track of Wrath, LoG’s new album.

DO… HAVE A ROUTINE
When there’s nothing much to do all day you can work out before a set. I’d be lifting weights and doing pull-ups on the trailer and getting pumped while drinking a whiskey and coke. Pretty much every band on this tour [The Altamont Never Say Die! Tour] spends 30 to 50 minutes a day working out. Even just stretching or doing a few push ups. And then you have your 30-45 minutes onstage. It’s like a cardiovascular work-out running around like a monkey.

DO… REMEMBER TO TAKE TIME OFF
“I prefer to have one day off a week, but that’s fantasy world! This tour is 24 shows in 24 days. It’s gruelling. For all dudes who scream for a living it’s going to be hard. I’m eager to see who’s the first one to go and blow their voice out. We’ve been doing it so long that we can pace ourselves; in case those nights come along where you do accidentally get fucked up. If we know we’re getting tired or run down then we’ll take it easy – not drink after the show, watch a movie or something. That really doesn’t happen very often though. But we can try.

DON’T… FORGET TO HAVE FUN!
If someone passes out and he’s not in his bunk then we write on him. Even if their hand is out of the bunk that’s fair game. We coloured in someone’s entire forearm once. Our guitar tech, Grizz, passed out on tour once and I drew Godzilla on him. I’m not the greatest artists and he woke up in the morning and said, ‘Who the fuck drew a dinosaur-chicken on my arm?’ So now, every time he passes out he gets the dinosaur-chicken-Godzilla. He’ll wake up and be like, ‘oh, he’s back’.
I think the best time we ‘got’ someone was when we got our old sound guy, Sean. He passed out in the van snoring like fuck. We tried waking him up when we got to the hotel, but he just wouldn’t wake up. We stuck one Velcro strip to one side on his face, and the other bit to the back of his phone. We Velcroed his phone to his face and kept calling him and calling him. His ringtone was this really horrible bleepy version of Strawberry Fields Forever. It just rang and rang and rang. We do a lot of writing on people. It works well because there isn’t always a mirror on the bus so people will be walking around not knowing they have ‘dick’ written on their forehead or whatever. A good one is drawing a ladies legs going from a guy’s arm up to their back and the crease of your armpit looks like a vagina. So you just draw the full rig right up.”