By 2009, August Burns Red were no strangers to the heavy music scene. Already the band had two heavily spun releases under their belt - Thrill Seeker and Messenger - but it was their release of that year, Constellations, that would launch the Philly band, at a meteoric pace, to the highest echelons of the metalcore community. The pointy end of the charts; award territory, baby.  


The release would also mark the beginning of the bands strong love affair with their Australian fans, with an August Burns Red tour never too far away from being announced since the album dropped. As such, it was a no-brainer to include our fair nation in the albums 10th anniversary international tour."


Despite being knee deep preparing for the 10th anniversary run of Constellations, guitarist Brent Rambler is still processing the milestone. “It's kind of crazy. We had the Messengers album turn 10, and now we had this one turning 10. It's all just like, man, we've been a band for so long.”


“You don't really think about it, but time really flies.” Brent summises of the anniversary, “I remember recording. I remember I bought my first house. We were down in Florida and my wife went to go settle on our first house, and that was right when we started recording Constellations. So there's a lot of memories surrounding that record."


“It's definitely an important record.” Brant says as he ponders the impact Constellations had with the gift of hindsight “I think it's probably the album where we found our footing as to what the band was going to sound like moving forward. It was kind of, I guess, the beginnings of the more experimental sounds that we'd get into more later in our career. It kicked off what sounds like August Burns Red...It's one that we can put on and I think it still has some decent lasting value…”

 

If streaming services are anything to go by - which they are - Constellations and the gems contained within have remained in high demand from fans since their release. Despite receiving critical and cultural acclaim with follow-up releases, there is a strong bastion of fans who could never put down Constellations. 


And for good reason. Constellations was quite unlike other metalcore albums at the time. No clean singing, leaving it up to the guitars to most of the floor routine, resulting in some of the most creative and unique records of the year. Essentially, Constellations existed in it’s own universe. “Obviously there's some As I Lay Dying influence in there.” Brent says as he reminisces on some of the external pressures that forged Constellations,  “There's a lot of pull-off-y riffs and a lot of alternate picking and stuff like that. It's a pretty thrashy record.” 


“But then we've always been the kind of band that doesn't listen to too much metal”, Brent adds, “I think we didn't wanna get trapped into verse/chorus, verse/chorus thing. That was kind of where, As I Lay Dying was probably the biggest metalcore band at that time, and they were just doing your verse/chorus stuff, and Josh didn't really sing.”


“I think that that's maybe why it sounded a little bit different than everything else; There weren't repeating parts. There weren't choruses. No one's singing anything. It was just straight up, we'll get to the end of the song and that'll be the big crescendo. And every single song had a big part like that.”


The call to not include clean vocals on Constellations was a big one. After all, As I Lay Dying were one of the biggest Metalcore bands at the time. Asking Alexandria had just released Shut Up And Scream, Architects too had ventured into clean vocals on Hollow Crown. August Burns Red avoided the trend, but as Brent explains, it wasn’t so strategic, “I think it's just because no one at the time as a band thought we could sing and pull it off live.” 

We've always been a band that we've always been, "Okay, can we play this live?" Brent says, “Sure, as you go through our records we add orchestral elements and things like that, but for the most part, the core parts of the songs are things that we hope to pull off live. So when we look back at that, it's just because literally no one in the band had a good singing voice at that point and felt comfortable doing that.” 


“You look back and a lot of the bands that were doing it then, you're like, "Okay, you're singing, but a lot of it's really autotuned to hell." Obviously, Pro Tools wasn't as refined 10 years ago, so when someone's voice was being pitched, you could really notice, and that wasn't something that we were gonna really be into at that point.”


When the Constellation sessions were wrapped, you could forgive the masterminds behind such a release to bask in their sonic glory, but when asked if he recalled a specific ‘a-ha!’ moment from the sessions, Brent struggles to place it; “It's kind of hard to put yourself in that position to where you're listening back to it without a critical ear and just for enjoyment."


"I think it comes much later than that" Brent adds of the eventual Constellations ‘eureka’ moment, “Maybe even years down the road where you listen back and go, "Oh, this is a really great record." I think that's just because you listen to it back so many times for mixing notes, listen back so many times for mastering notes.”


The band are even struggling to remove their critical-thinking cap with Constellations, given potential plans for the tracks later this year, “Even now, we're listening back for stuff for a possible remix that we might do later in the year for the record, this 10th birthday.”


With more rehearsals to get back to, we saved the big question for the end of the chat with Brent. After all these years, what is his favourite track on Constellations? 

“After pouring through it today; I've been through the whole thing today. I'm gonna say, I really like The Escape Artist, and I've always really liked that song.”


“I love the way it starts. I wrote the lyrics for that and they're very scathing. I've always just liked the aggression in that song. I actually saw the person I wrote that song about. I literally haven't seen them in, I don't know, 12 years, and I saw them coming out of a beer store, maybe two and a half weeks ago…


...I was like, how ironic.”

10 Years Of Constellations Australian Tour

Friday 11 October: 170 Russell, Melbourne (18+)

Saturday 12 October: Metro Theatre, Sydney (Licensed All Ages)

Sunday 13 October: Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle (18+)

Monday 14 October: Triffid, Brisbane (18+)

Wednesday 16 October: Capitol, Perth (18+)

Thursday 17 October: Lion Arts Factory, Adelaide (Licensed All Ages)