Diamonds in the Rough 07.12.09: Hurt

Posted by Leo Rivera on 07.12.2009

It is going to take a ten ton brick to hold these rockers down!


"I'm back, the fog has lifted, the earth has shifted, now raise the gifted, you knew I would be back so pack your bags and hit the road jack cause daddy's home!" Wow I never thought I would quote Kid Rock of all people in one of my articles, but all jokes aside, it is good to be back! I guess you could say the summer has gotten the best of me, but now it's time to hit the ground running. As I have stated before, writing this column on a weekly basis is a labor of love that is fulfilling to me for the simple fact that I am allowed the opportunity to write about bands that I love and feel are underrated. In the next few weeks I will be covering many neglected but talented bands like: Our Lady Peace, Tantric, Story of the Year and 12 Stones, to name a few.

This week I want to focus on a band by the name of Hurt. Hurt are one of those bands that you really can't plug into any one sub-genre of rock, they are just far too diverse and eclectic in my opinion. I have actually proclaimed Hurt as the masters of the "slow burn" rocker. If you are not familiar with the term "slow burn" it's when a song begins very melodic and low and throughout the duration, the song slowly creeps up to a fever pitch before suddenly knocking you dead on your ass with the musical equivalent of a shotgun (think Metallica's "Fade to Black"). That is the best way that I could define these guys:



Hurt was formed in Virginia in 2000, by singer J Loren and drummer Will Quiantance. The two musicians got together and shortly thereafter independently released their debut album which sold over 1,200 copies locally. They toured and jammed with various local musicians, but the bands line up was shaky. They had a revolving door of bass players (rumored to be as many as sixteen!) and non-committal guitarists. The core of the band was always maintained by Loren and Quiintance. In 2003, they self-released an L.P. titled The Consummation which featured the song "House of Cards" and a raw version of the song "Loaded." The Consummation sold about 2,000 copies and Hurt gave away another 3,000 copies for free in hopes of spreading their music out. I guess the word spread better than they expected because copies of the limited released album were suddenly being sold for as much as $170.00 a piece on E-bay, pretty damn impressive for an unknown band at the time.

To capitalize on this unexpected buzz, Hurt re-released the album through Adrenaline Music in 2004 and titled it The Re-Consummation. With the kind of local buzz that Hurt had created, it was just a matter of time before their luck changed for the better. In 2005, lady luck came calling in the form of Tom Lewis, a Universal Records A & R executive, who was so blown away by Hurt, that he quite his high paying job so that he could manage the band! He wanted to see through that he took them to the top! Lewis kept true to his ambitions and promptly got Hurt signed to Capitol Records. Around this time, Hurt recruited guitarist Paul Spatola who would have a huge impact in cultivating Hurts signature sound and overall style.



By the time they were signed to Capitol Records, Hurt had already completed their latest LP which they appropriately titled Vol. 1, to celebrate their mainstream coming out party. Capitol paid $100,000 for the rights to the album and released it in 2006. There are several standout tracks on the album including: "Unkind", "Falls Apart" and "Dance Russe." "Unkind" best showcases Hurts harder edge as it is a very straight forward hard rock song with a guitar break in the middle that sounds as if the band is going to go into The Red Hot Chili Peppers "Californication" before they return to the hard rock. "Falls Apart" and "Dance Russe" are more melodic ballads with minor hard parts. But no song on the record better captures the essence of Hurt than "Rapture." "Rapture" is the perfect example of a "slow burn" song played to perfection! It starts ominously enough with a loud thumping drum pounce and then Loren shouts off his signature "Hey" as the song slows down a bit just long enough before Loren goes into the rising chorus which peaks at him screaming "Life has gone away! Life has gone this way!!" and then later after the mid song break down he screams "Cause your born again! Until your worn again!" and just when you think the song is about to fade way it breaks into a rollicking guitar meets drum dual that words cannot defeat (AKA you need to hear it for yourselves).

After touring with bands like: Seether, Three Days Grace and Breaking Benjamin. Hurt went back into the studio to record Vol. 2. By this point in their careers, Hurt had perfected their act as evidenced by the driving hard rock single "10 Ton Brick." Much like rapture, the song starts hard (this time with the guitars and a hard vocal lead in to the melodic chorus) then gets hard again at the end of the chorus and into the second verse of "who am I supposed to be if everything good was taken from me, who am I supposedly!") Just an awesome song that ends in a thunderous way, definitely recommend a listen.



But in my opinion the standout track is the re-made version of "Loaded" which mixes the slow burn elements of "Rapture" and the beauty of ballads like "Falls Apart." Just like the title suggests, "Loaded" is a song about the bad influences that drug addict friends can have on a person (you know when your drug addled buddy thinks your lame for not getting high?) and almost speaks as a hard rocking public service announcement, . The song starts off like shotgun blast and then goes into a beautiful click drum lead in to the chorus with a chorus of "You want me to get high with you, you want me to get loaded" and then a frantic warning "life is sitting on the shoulders of a comet, you did your time and then the times aside and when the choice arises you decide death or life." Then Loren tells his addict friend "if you want to leave me fine, have a superficial time as the center in you dies, when you were searching for that high!" A powerful, powerful song!

Things were going great for Hurt until shit hit the fan and they were dropped from Capitol Records in May 2008, with the record label stating that the reason was "purely financial." The band did see it coming though, as J. Loren had stated in previous interviews that he was in disgust with the overall handling of the band by the major record label. This disgust stems from the fact that Capitol had type-cast and marketed the band as "Metal." Another reason for Lorens' disgust was the fact that Capitol refused to re-print Vol. 2 in spite of the fact that it sold 58,000 of the 60,000 that were printed. That is a shame especially when you consider that vol. 1 sold 140,000, it seems like Capitol cut their own legs on that one.



In 2009 Hurt signed with independent label Amusement Records and released their third major album titled Goodbye to the Machine in April 2009. The album features a guest appearance from Seether front man Shaun Morgan, and is more of a happy medium with some songs being total ballads and others like "Wars" and "Well" being more straight forward rockers. I think it would have helped to have a few more slow burn songs in the record, but its Hurt we are talking about here and with them you are almost always going to get something good. With a summer long tour on the horizon and work on a follow up record next year, you can expect to hear the masters of the slow burn at work for some time to come, and with that, until next week, peace I'm out of here!