— MTV News staff report
Back in the day, Jonathan Donais, Matthew Bachand, Paul Romanko, David Germain and Brian Fair lolled away the hours headbanging to Iron Maiden and Metallica.
"Everyone has those records, even if they buried them for a while when it wasn't cool and covered them with their new Adidas jacket," Fair said of the metal bands the guys idolized as teens.
Those bands never ventured far from the guys' hearts, however, and they brought the men of Shadows Fall together in Massachusetts in 1996 (original frontman Phil Lebonte was replaced in 1998 by Fair).
The group takes a hard-line "fashion be damned" attitude to its craft, choosing to let raw vocals and crunching guitars stand as its lone fashion statement.
"Our gimmick is that we can play, and that's really the only gimmick we need," Fair said.
For a while, however, it seemed that a gimmick might actually be in order, as the band had a hard time finding an audience for its melodic, progressive take on death metal.
"At first we were a little too metal for the hardcore crowd, and we were getting complaints of being too hardcore for some of the real metal kids," Fair recalled.
Eventually, the death metal and hardcore crowds caught on, gaining the band a strong following among fans of both genres.
"We can play the traditional metal tours. We do the hardcore tours. We can do the death metal tours," Fair said. "I think that's opened us up a lot, and now our crowds when we play are such a mix."
As Shadows fell across a wider audience, the band reflected their different fan bases on the 2000 release Of One Blood. A healthy round of touring followed, but the band still relies on day jobs to make ends meet. The men of Shadows Fall are hoping to leave the restaurants, grocery stores and malls behind them, however, as they head back into the studio to record the follow-up to Of One Blood. They plan to hit the road again as well, and are keeping all of their options open.
"I would go out on the road with Britney Spears and we'd rock her crowd every night," Fair said.
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