Photo by Errick Easterday
Bathed in the heat from late June’s setting sun, hundreds of hardcore fans from Nashville and beyond cram the parking lot of The Basement. On a homemade stage, hometown heroes Orthodox are ready to rip into their set, filled with songs from their just-released fourth studio album, A Door Left Open.
But before the spinkicks and stagedives, vocalist Adam Easterling makes sure the crowd knows how many people tirelessly worked to make this free, all-ages show a reality. They were here building the stage until 1 a.m, a culmination of nearly nine months worth of work for this one performance. With support from No Cure, Shotgun, Twin Stacks and Die Trying, it’s a moment created specifically for Nashville’s hardcore scene.
“So you better jump off this fucking thing!”
And they did. Orthodox steamrolled through 15 songs – including seven from their newest album and a cheeky nod to System of a Down – while bodies flew through the air and fists and feet swung mercilessly in the pit.
It was a warm up show of sorts, as the band would officially kick off their 30-city North American tour the following night at The Basement’s sister venue, The Basement East.
It was also a thank you to everyone who’d shown up over the years to help get the band to this point. And, for Easterling, it’s the first time he gets to see the live reaction to A Door Left Open. He’s been waiting for this since dumping his thoughts into the songs in the studio and sitting on them for nearly a year.
“I'm tired of trying to write this thing that connects to someone deep in the back of the room,” he says in a sit-down interview with Knotfest. “I want something for somebody that's up at the front.”
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Musically, A Door Left Open pushes Orthodox’s blend of nu-metal and metallic hardcore into places it hasn’t been before. Lyrically, it’s an even more raw and visceral take that matches the blunt-force beating delivered by Easterlings bandmates: drummer Mike White, guitarists Austin Evans and Ben Touchberry and bassist Shiloh Krebs.
“It was very hard for me to write [lyrics] before we were actually in the studio, so a lot of this was me under the gun,” he says. Instead of overthinking, he scrawled out what felt right. Whatever was on the top of his head that needed to be expressed.
Take “Body Chalk,” 68 seconds of impossibly chunky guitar punches, accentuated by White’s transitions from two-step to primal beat . Easterling wasted no time putting image to paper.
“The song itself sounded like getting hit by a bus,” he says. “So I went upstairs and in like 30 minutes, wrote a song about getting hit by a bus. The whole song itself is a metaphor for making a decision that you know will have a consequence, but you just have to take a step anyway. That's what a lot of the record is about.
“It's one of those things where I wrote that and didn't realize that that's what it actually meant to me until later.”
In fact, the entirety of A Door Left Open is filled with themes that leaked through Easterling’s subconscious and onto the proverbial page. References to taking steps backwards, being buried, fire, Heaven and Hell. Even the phrase “a door left open” repeats throughout, bookending the first and last seconds of opener “Can You Save Me?” and closer “Will You Hate Me?”; themselves lyrically connected.
“I didn't have a lot of time to dig into what it was that I was writing about,” he says. “A year later, I can look back and be like, ‘Oh, here's where all these things connect. Here's where all these ideas are running off this one theme.’ It was cool to realize that my brain knew what I was doing before I actually did.
“I realized I was about to go through a pretty huge season of change, and A Door Left Open is essentially the idea of what could get in and what could be waiting for you inside. Or what got out that you can't find again. So it’s grief and loss, as well as just fear.”
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What sets A Door Left Open apart from other Orthodox albums is its creative continuity. Bringing back producer Randy LeBoeuf (The Acacia Strain, Dying Wish, Gideon) – who also produced 2022’s Learning to Dissolve – to work with a consistent lineup gave Orthodox a sense of familiarity to focus on writing.
“The last record was the first record we made as a collective,” Easterling says. “This time around, we knew how we were going to work, what issues we had in the first one and what we could do better about that. That helped a lot in terms of developing it, and also lent a lot to the overall product.”
But what may have helped even more is the experience of knowing what it was like to work in an intense studio environment.
“Our previous LP was also our first time doing a record where we were in a central location for an extended period of time,” Easterling said. “It was our first time being with a producer and really, really diving into demos and questioning every single turn.
“That process is so exhilarating and exhausting all at once. Knowing what we were getting into with the second one allowed us to be more prepared and even more relaxed. We knew that if we get there and we have a couple ideas to throw around for it, Randy's gonna be able to be like, ‘Oh, well here's what you should do.’ So having the confidence in the producer, in the space, and also just knowing what it was going to be like for us to actually create there was huge relief.”
He says they were “pretty dead set” on working with LeBoeuf again, and Easterling credits him for augmenting Orthodox’s already cutting-edge sound to places even they never thought they could go.
“There's multiple moments on our album where I don't think I've ever heard a record sound like that,” Easterling said. “A lot of that is because of his resourcefulness, as well as just ingenuity with how he can manipulate sound.”
“Sacred Place” is a prime example, harmonics flying and diving around the listener’s head like angry mosquitos, while White and Krebs rumble through the low end, adding tectonic weight to every gut-punch guitar chug.
Orthodox still mines from their nu-metal inspirations, but there is far more looking forward than back. The band know who they are now more than ever, and don’t feel the need to try and be anything else.
“I think with Learning to Dissolve, we were trying to show what we could do,” Easterling said. “We were trying to level up and show we can write a real song with verse-chorus-verse format and tried to expand it into where we thought maybe the Century Media crowd would actually like it.
“It turns out that Century Media fans just want black metal and bullshit, so they didn't like it anyways. And in that, I think we realized what works best for us. We just developed a lot more trust in ourselves and the things that we were creating. We can get away with so much more than we thought, and that allowed us the freedom to just write the craziest shit we can think of.”
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It’s been a long road for Orthodox; they’ve been grinding and clawing for over a decade to get this far. But the sleepless nights, empty venues and frustrating writing sessions have all been worth it. They were embraced by their hometown scene, and through years of touring and playing anywhere they could, also embraced by the wider scene at large.
“The recognition within our own scenes has been amazing,” Easterling says. “We played shows to like 10 people – and sometimes even less – for years. Went on tour and did the same thing. For years. We ate shit for a long time. I have to remind myself that every goal that I set out for myself when this band started has already been obtained. Now it's all just leveling up time and time again.”
But even through all of that, there was no other option than to keep charging forward and making music. Their vision and ambition kept them going even when reason said they probably shouldn’t.
“I don't think quitting has ever really been on my mind,” Easterling says. “I think that's what's so special about the guys we have. We're all lifers at this point.”
“The coolest thing for me has been just the fact that we’ve gained the support that we have. It’s to the point where now I'm looking ahead and if we do these next few months correctly – and this next tour cycle, or even the next record correctly – we could make a living out of this. That's just something I never thought (possible.)”
He hopes their journey can inspire anyone else wanting to start a band, build a stage, or express themselves through aggressive music. He mentions how Alabama’s No Cure and Kentucky’s Gates to Hell exploded on the scene thanks to their relentless drive, knowing their brand, a forward-thinking vision and desire to play anywhere and everywhere they could.
“In the grand scheme of things, those are brand new bands touring the world already,” he says. “It's just because they approached it with, ‘It doesn't matter who's gonna show up. It doesn't matter if we're viral or not. We're gonna go play these shows and fuck you if you have a problem with it.’
“Answer all the questions you think you need to answer before you play your first show, and just be patient. Then, once you hit that mark, just don't stop.”
A Door Left Open by Orthodox is available everywhere now via Century Media Records.
