Road Luck

“Nobody really knows why Isis didn’t use their full time [on stage], but [their early departure] allowed Earthless to literally steal the festival,” says Steve Dolcemaschio of Tee Pee Records. He refers to this summer’s Roadburn Festival in Tilburg, Holland, where “Earthless was originally only supposed to play a small 200-person room.…

“The band was setting up when the guy who organizes Roadburn ran into the room, yelling that Isis only played an hour of their two-hour slot. They were scrambling to find a replacement band, and suddenly Earthless was up on the main stage of the festival, in front of thousands of rabid concertgoers who never heard of them before.”

The band played for just under two hours.

“It was kind of a ‘WTF’ reaction at first, but [the band] ended up killing it,” according to Dolcemaschio, who says that Earthless wasn’t given additional pay for the headlining set.

“It wasn’t until after they got back that we found out the show was taped.… Turns out the recording sounded fantastic, so we made a deal [with festival operators] to put it out.”

The double disc Live at Roadburn was released last week.

– Jay Allen Sanford