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Unleash the Archers

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Unleash the Archers (Music)
L-R: Grant Truesdell, Andrew Kingsley, Brittney Slayes, Nick Miller, Scott Buchanan
Unleash the Archers is a Canadian heavy metal band from Victoria, BC. They are currently signed with Napalm Records. The band is notable for its Creator Couple of vocalist and principal songwriter Brittney Slayes and drummer Scott Buchanan, their rotating bandmates, as well as its unique take on Power Metal using some death metal elements with growls.

They primarily toured Canada up and down throughout the early 2010s, and finally broke into prominence primarily on the heels of their Time Stands Still album, and followed it up with the Concept Album Apex, about a terrible Matriarch who summons an immortal to do her bidding.

    Line Up 

Line Up

  • Current
    • Brittney Hayes (a.k.a. Brittney Slayes) – clean vocals (2007–present)
    • Scott Buchanan – drums (2007–present)
    • Grant Truesdell – guitars, unclean vocals (2011–present)
    • Andrew Kingsley – guitars, unclean vocals (2013–present)
    • Nick Miller – bass (touring 2018-2021, full-time 2021-present)

Previous

  • Mike Selman – guitars (2007–2011)
  • Zahk Hedstrom – bass (2007–2012)
  • Brad Kennedy – bass (2012–2013)
  • Brayden Dyczkowski – guitars, unclean vocals (2007–2013)
  • Kyle Sheppard – bass (2014–2016)
  • Nikko Whitworth – bass (2016–2018)

    Discography 

Discography:

  • Unleash The Archers - Demo (2008)
  • Behold the Devastation (2009)
  • Demons of the AstroWaste (2011)
  • Defy The Skies - EP (2012)
  • Dreamcrusher - Demo (2014)
  • Time Stands Still (2015)
  • Apex (2017)
  • Explorers - EP (2019)
  • Abyss (2021)
  • Phantoma (2024)

    Videography 

Videography

  • 2011: "Dawn of Ages"
  • 2012: "General of the Dark Army"
  • 2015: "Tonight We Ride"
  • 2015: "Test Your Metal"
  • 2016: "Time Stands Still"
  • 2017: "Cleanse the Bloodlines"
  • 2017: "Awakening"
  • 2020: "Abyss"
  • 2020: "Soulbound"


Unleash the Archers' music provide examples of:

  • Affectionate Parody: The video for "Faster Than Light" is a spoof of The Long Walk, depicting the band running a track race where the referee kills any member who stops with the starting pistol.
  • Assimilation Plot: "The Collective" depicts the Ridiculously Human Robot protagonist Ph4/NT0mA joining a Robot Religion that initially appears welcoming, only to realize they plan to strip all robots of their individuality and spend the rest of the Phantoma album trying to find a way to defeat them.
  • All Are Equal in Death: The symbolism of the video for "Faster than Light". The band members have a Mundane Made Awesome race on a running track... except the judge starts killing them with the starting pistol. First Andrew runs out of steam and is shot in the head, then Scott pulls a hamstring. Grant jumps the fence to run away after passing one of the corpses on his next lap and is shot In the Back. Brittney crosses the finish line, is congratulated, and gets in a car to leave... only to have the judge lean over the back of the passenger seat and shoot her as well.
  • Asshole Victim: In "Cleanse the Bloodlines", the Matriarch commands the Immortal to slay her sons. She's doing it to slake her bloodlust and become immortal herself, but the succeeding songs show the first three sons kinda have it coming, being tyrants who have enslaved their peoples with their words.
  • Automation Outlasts Civilization: Phantoma describes a far-future civilization composed entirely of robots after humans have gone extinct... or so it appears.
  • Big Bad: The Matriarch is this in Apex and Abyss.
  • Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti: It stars in the video for Dawn of Ages, where it kidnaps the band one by one... only to reveal it's a huge fan, and wants to see them play.
  • Bitter Sweet Ending: "Abyss" concludes with the Matriarch defeated and the Immortal finally free. However, it takes the Grandson performing a Heroic Sacrifice to help the Immortal win. Something which weighs heavily upon the Immortal's conscience.
  • Broken Pedestal: In "Gods In Decay", the heroine Ph4/NT0mA finds the last refuge of humanity, whom she idolized, and discovers they're perfectly happy to continue hiding away from the world rather than help defeat the Collective, and view her as little more than a slave. The Robot Republic will have to solve the problem themselves.
    Gods in decay
    This is not the famous human racе, that I came to love
    No one to save
    I am not an equal just a slave, and my hope has come undone
  • The Cake Is a Lie: In "Cleanse the Bloodlines", the Matriarch promises to free the Immortal "from this earthly tie" if he kills her sons for her. In "Call Me Immortal" she reveals that she was lying (which he half-expected all along), and he returns to his Mountain to await the events of the next album.
  • Careful with That Axe: Brittney is usually good for one really good powerful belt to start most of their singles.
  • Concept Album:
    • Apex is the most obvious one, telling the story of an Immortal who is magically bound to serve whomever speaks the words to summon him from his Mountain, though many of their post-2011 releases are structured so eerily like one you could almost make the story yourself. Abyss continues the story from Apex after a fifty-year Time Skip, featuring the Immortal being brought forth by the son of one of the men he killed in the previous album to take vengeance on the Matriarch.
    • Phantoma is a story about a Robot Republic in a world where humanity has seemingly gone extinct. The eponymous Fembot protagonist makes a chance discovery at work one day that leads her to their last enclave, as well as to a Robot Religion called the Collective that means to wipe them out and strip all robots of their free will.
  • Dead Alternate Counterpart: In the video for "Northwest Passage", Brittney finds the tombstone of her male bandmates in one of the alternate timelines she jumps through. At the end of the song she pulls a Kill and Replace on her own counterpart and takes that Brittney's place onstage.
  • Death by Music Video:
    • The video for their Cover Version of "Northwest Passage" depicts Brittney Slayes jumping through a series of Alternate Timelines. In one version she finds the gravestone of her bandmates. In the end she kills another version of herself by shoving her down a flight of stairs at a concert venue, and takes her place onstage.
    • The video for "Faster Than Light" depicts the band members doing a foot race on a running track... except the referee starts killing anybody who stops running with the starting pistol. Brittney wins and leaves the track... to find the referee sitting in the front seat of her limo. Cut to the muzzle flash seen from the outside of the car as it drives off. (The video is a parody of Stephen King's The Long Walk.)
  • Dirty Coward: In "Ten Thousand Against One", the singer calls out the subject for sending out soldiers to fight a war for his selfish interests.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: Their early stuff has more emphasis on Brittney's voice and on the drums, with relatively simple guitar and bass work and an overall sound closer to Melodic Death Metal. Time Stands Still and Apex comparatively are much more epic in sonic scale, embracing the band's modern heavy Power Metal sound.
  • Face Death with Dignity: The last of the Matriarch's sons in "Earth and Ashes" accepts his fate calmly and tells the Immortal he has lived a good life and has no regrets.
  • Faster-Than-Light Travel: "Faster than Light" depicts the Immortal doing, well, what it says in the title.
  • Genre Shift:
  • Harsh Vocals: Andrew and Grant.
  • Heavy Mithril: The band's lyrics are heavily influenced by science fiction and Dark Fantasy literature (Brittney has cited The Black Company as a personal favorite), describing conflicts in dystopian fantasy worlds waged by various Evil Overlords. Also the video for "Faster than Light" is a spoof of Stephen King's The Long Walk.
  • Homage: The music video for "Tonight We Ride" heavily references the Mad Max franchise, depicting a race on various ATVs across a desert in a Scavenger World.
  • Immortality Inducer: The Matriarch drains the life from her sons in order to become immortal.
  • Kill and Replace: One Alternate Timeline version of Brittney does this to another timeline's version at the end of the video for the "Northwest Passage" cover.
  • Lyrics/Video Mismatch:
    • The video for the Cover Version of "Northwest Passage", which is about the speaker traveling across Canada and reminiscing about the daring deeds of European explorers, depicts Brittney jumping through a series of alternate timelines and encountering different versions of herself and her bandmates. She finally fatally pushes one version down a flight of stairs at a music venue and takes her place onstage.
    • The video of "Faster than Light" does this as an intentional joke: the lyrics are about the Immortal traveling faster than light to escape the Matriarch, but the video depicts the band having a Mundane Made Awesome race on a running track.
  • Male Band, Female Singer: Brittney is on record as disliking the term "female-fronted metal" because it doesn't actually tell you very much about what genre a band belongs to or what it might sound like.
  • Metal Scream: Brittney, Grant, and Andrew. There are plenty of examples, but they all get a solid one in during the intro of "Tonight We Ride."
  • Offing the Offspring: In "Cleanse the Bloodlines", the Matriarch tells the Immortal about how she plans to kill her sons to maintain her own immortality. We also see this in the music video.
  • One-Man Army: In "Ten Thousand Against One" the Immortal slaughters an entire army to get the third of the Matriarch's sons, all the while begging them to stop attacking so he doesn't have to kill them.
  • "Onwards into Eternity" Epilogue: The story of Abyss concludes with the song "Afterlife", where the Immortal, freed from his Restraining Bolt curse by the destruction of the Matriarch and her Grandson's Heroic Sacrifice, travels out into the galaxy to figure out what to do next with his life.
  • Power Metal: A notable North American example. The earlier albums bear more influence from Melodic Death Metal, but by Time Stands Still they're fully Power Metal and starting to incorporate influence from Progressive Metal.
  • Powered by a Forsaken Child: The Immortal discovers at the end of "The Wind that Shapes the Land" that he was unknowingly drawing the life from the Grandson to slay the Matriarch; however, the Grandson regards this as a Heroic Sacrifice.
  • Revenge: In Abyss, the Immortal discovers that the new master who has awoken him this time is not the Matriarch, but a previously unknown Grandson who seeks to avenge her Human Sacrifice of his father in Apex.
  • Revolving Door Band: The only consistent members are Brittney and Scott.
  • Ridiculously Human Robots: The story of Phantoma describes a civilization made up entirely of sapient robots in a far future after mankind has gone extinct.
  • Sequel: Abyss continues the Immortal's story from Apex, the first time the band has done this.
  • Soprano and Gravel: An unusual example for Power Metal: in contrast to bands like Nightwish, Brittney is a contralto and sings in a decidedly non-operatic register. They accent this with Harsh Vocals from her male bandmates.
  • Spaceship Slingshot Stunt: "Soulbound"'s first verse describes the Immortal and the Grandson using a swing around a remnant of a neutron star to fling themselves "into dark galactic rifts".
  • Stage Names: Brittney's real last name is Hayes.
  • Stock Footage: The lyric video for "Ten Thousand Against One" uses footage of US military exercises, including multiple shots of an A-10 Warthog.
  • Tired of Running: Over the course of "Faster than Light" the Immortal comes to the realization he'll never escape the Matriarch. In the next song, "The Wind that Shapes the Land", he turns and fights. And wins.
  • Title Track
    • "Apex"
    • "Time Stands Still"
  • "The Villain Sucks" Song: These songs state the horrible deeds of the individuals in their respective album.
    • The Matriarch
    • General of the Dark Army
  • Trash-Can Band: The end of the Dawn of Ages video has the band playing the song on whatever they could get their hands on to play for Bigfoot.
  • Undying Warrior: The viewpoint character of the concept albums Apex and Abyss is the Immortal, "a weapon of empires past" who has spent untold eons being periodically awoken by various masters to serve their goals. In Apex the evil Matriarch sends him to kill her four sons as part of a ritual to make herself immortal as well, which includes the Immortal pulling a One-Man Army routine in the song "Ten Thousand Against One". In Abyss he battles her instead, having been called forth by the son of one of the men he killed in Apex.
  • Vicious Cycle: Dawn of Ages discusses the terrible cycle of destruction created by a magic sword that was intended to bring a land to everlasting peace.
  • Villain Song: "General of the Dark Army" from Demons of the Astrowaste.
  • Whole-Plot Reference: The video for "Faster than Light" is a parody of Stephen King's The Long Walk.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: The title track of Phantoma is actually spelled "Ph4/NT0mA", because the protagonist is a Ridiculously Human Robot.

 
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In a spoof of Stephen King's "The Long Walk", the video for "Faster than Light" depicts the band members of Unleash the Archers racing in slow motion around a running track -- a race in which the referee kills anyone who stops running or leaves the track with the starting pistol.

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