Trivia / Unearth

• Creative Differences:
  • The band was born from this. In a September 2006 interview with Decibel Magazine, they described how how they came together as a result of dissatisfaction with how things were going in their two prior groups. Ken and Buz wouldn't say that much about the circumstances that led to Point 04 parting with their singer except that they got sick of him. Trevor was a bit more revealing about his split from Second Division over conflicts he had with the group's "edgy hardcore kid" guitarist regarding the integration of metal riffs into the band's sound.
  • The 2007 press release announcing Mike Justian's termination mentioned both creative and personal differences, but refused to further elaborate on either. It seems that he later resolved those differences with Trevor and Buz at least, leading to his return in 2022.
  • The band portrayed Derek Kerswill's departure as being amicable, and based entirely on "musical differences". Kerswill did not contest this characterization (by his own admission, he was a rock drummer who just kept getting hired on by metal bands, and while he joined Unearth because they were his friends and he thought it'd be fun, he burned out fairly quickly), and even returned for one show shortly before Nick was first recruited.
  • Ken's was a mix of musical (he wasn't seeing eye-to-eye with Buz on the direction of the band) and personal (he wasn't getting along with the rest of the band and especially Trevor), and both sides made it clear that a mutual impasse had been reached and they could not salvage their relationship.
• Creator Breakdown: Trevor admitted to having one of these when the band reached Canada in 2003, in the midst's of the group's extremely challenging winter/spring tour. An outbreak of SARS in Ontario and the beginning of the US military's invasion of Iraq happening at roughly the same time were the final straws that pushed him over the edge. The meltdown manifested in the immediate moment as a lengthy, drunken tirade about the George W. Bush administration. Longer-term, it appears to have pushed Trevor into writing more Protest Songs for The Oncoming Storm and subsequent albums.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: The majority of their albums have these, usually featuring bonus tracks, a bonus DVD, or sometimes (such as The Oncoming Storm) both.
• No Export for You: Subverted in the U.S. with "Throes of Remission" and the cover of "Spirit In Black", which were left off the standard edition of Watchers of Rule but included on the deluxe version. Possibly played straight in Japan with "Trail to Fire" and "To the Ground", the songs "Throes" and "Spirit" replaced on their standard edition. (whether Japan's gotten its own deluxe edition is unclear)
• Promoted Fanboy: Nick Pierce. He first came to the attention of the band when they found YouTube videos of him covering drum tracks from their earlier work.
• What Could Have Been: Trevor Phipps almost wasn't in the band, and in fact had to be basically conned into joining. He and Ken were apparently in regular contact by the time the latter joined Point 04,^note Ken has been said to have joined after Buz, Rover and Rudberg had already conceived the group and began asking the former to audition for the band from the point they split with their first singer until the group as a whole approached him while he was recovering from appendicitis. However, Trevor had been reluctant to start a new project despite his problems with Second Division's direction, and kept declining their requests. After this, Ken pitched him a side project instead, but pulled a Bait-and-Switch by having Buz, who wasn't meant to be in the side group, show up to their first scheduled jam session. Trevor figured out what was happening when he realized that Buz was wired into an amp and Rudberg was on the drumkit, but the others were able to sell him on the four songs they had put together (among them was "Shattered By The Sun"), and he accepted this request to join the band.

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