4-band show will be a scream

Pennsylvania-based Christian metalcore heavy hitters August Burns Red bring the Legends of the Fall Tour to Little Rock's Metroplex tonight. And they are not alone.

Opening the show will be progressive metal quartet ERRA of Birmingham, Ala., Australia's Make Them Suffer and Silent Planet of Los Angeles.

From the sound of things, all is well on the tour.

"I can't tell you how cool it is that a band of that caliber, who are 20 times bigger than our band, treats everyone with so much respect," says Silent Planet lead screamer Garrett Russell about August Burns Red. "We really love the guys in ERRA, and the dudes in Make Them Suffer are the nicest, most fun-loving bunch of crazy Australians."

Russell, 26, speaks from the road as he travels with bandmates Alex Camarena (drums), Mitchell Stark (guitar) and Thomas Freckleton (bass, clean vocals).

"I'm under a table inside the van and there are pine trees outside," he says, when asked where he was. "I think we're somewhere between Reno (Nev.) and Chico (Calif.)."

The morning after a gig of the aggressive, screaming-growling-singing that is a hallmark of his band's genre finds Russell's voice ragged and cracked, but there are ways to repair the damage.

"After shows where the monitors are good and the sound is good and I'm healthy, there's not too much to recover from," says Russell, who grew up in Redding, Calif. "But there are days, and yesterday was one of them, where I realize I went pretty hard. I usually take 12 hours of vocal silence. That helps a lot. I also drink lots of water."

Silent Planet is touring in support of its sophomore effort, Everything Is Sound, on Solid State Records. A follow-up to 2014's The Night God Slept, it's a bruising yet vulnerable concept album that finds Russell and his band telling the stories of inmates in a metaphorical prison who suffer from mental illnesses.

Russell may be the only metalcore singer with a master's degree from Fuller Theological Seminary's School of Clinical Psychology in Pasadena, Calif. How, exactly, did he get from the classroom to making such heavy music?

"I started the band early on in college," he says. "Like most bands, we were pretty awful. Members would come and go. I never thought we would go anywhere. I always wanted it to, but it never seemed really plausible."

Around 2011, though, the lineup gelled and stabilized, even though Russell had actually decided to attend graduate school. He split his time between classes and the band and, when it came time to pick between music and pursuing a doctorate, he chose to rock out.

"I'm honestly glad I did," he says.

Russell, who writes the band's lyrics, is drawn to creating conceptually. An EP, lastsleep (1944-1946) was based on stories of WWII victims.

"I've always been amazed by other band's concept records. I just wanted our songs to be about something [of substance]," he says.

He has written about sex trafficking on "XX (City Grave)" and the plight of American Indians on "Native Blood," both from The Night God Slept.

Suicide, anorexia and police violence are all explored on Everything Is Sound.

A highlight of the 12-track collection is the crunching "Panic Room," about a veteran of the war in Afghanistan suffering from post traumatic stress disorder. The song was inspired by a friend and fan of the band named Gerald Clark.

"He was brave enough to tell his story and talk about his combat experience and, really, his healing," Russell says, adding that Clark proposed to his fiancee onstage during a Silent Planet set at the Vans Warped tour stop in Nashville, Tenn.

"It's so cool to be able to do this," Russell says of touring and playing with his band and the others on tonight's bill. "I think about death a lot, and all that thinking about death has led me to be grateful everyday for what I've got."

Style on 10/04/2016