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 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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 with a massive Time Skip.
- 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.)
- The video for their Cover Version of "Northwest Passage"
- 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.
- Gender Flip: There's a minor running joke in the band's fandom that Brittany is Ronnie James Dio's daughter, based on her vocal performance.
- Genre Shift:
- Musically, the earlier albums have significantly more Melodic Death Metal influence, while the later albums have evolved more towards Power Metal.
- Lyrically, up through Apex, most of their material was inspired by fantasy literature. Abyss, a direct sequel to Apex, suddenly shifts the action to space for Science Fantasy.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- Sequel: Abyss continues the Immortal's story from Apex, the first time the band has done this.
- Shout-Out: The music video for "Tonight We Ride" heavily references The Mad Max Franchise.
- 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.
- Whole-Plot Reference: The video for "Faster than Light" is a parody of Stephen King's The Long Walk.
