INTERVIEW: EMMURE

Photo credit: Robert Scheuerman

Emmure frontman Frankie Palmeri remembers all too well playing to near-empty VFW halls and sticky-floored basements around New England as the Connecticut-based band embarked on its rise from the underground.

The scars, blows to the ego, and drama endured during those lean times won’t be far from the Brooklyn-born singer’s mind when he and his band hit the stage before tens of thousands of headbangers on the Rockstar Mayhem festival.

“We were a band that fought for every inch we got,” Palmeri told the Dig recently from a tour stop in New Mexico.

“Some nights, there was no one there, everyone left. The only people there were the bands that played before us. They would start turning the lights on and vacuuming the place while we were playing. It just goes to show, keep at it. We kept at it.”

Since forming in Connecticut in the early 2000s, the deathcore band has released five albums on hardcore powerhouse Victory Records, including last year’s Slave to the Game. An intense mix of East Coast hardcore, driving death metal, and down-tuned grind, the album marked their biggest commercial strike as it peaked at #58 on Billboard.

Now, they’re hitting Mansfield’s Comcast Center Tuesday, July 16, on the second stage with Children of Bodom and Born of Osiris. The main stage features Haverhill native Rob Zombie, Five Finger Death Punch, Virginia doom overlords Mastodon, and Swedish melodic death-metallers Amon Amarth, while a third stage features Machine Head, Job for a Cowboy, and Battlecross.

“It’s monumental for us. We’re all really excited to be on this,” Palmeri says.

“We’re just going to rock the spot and make the movement real … It’s still part of the journey. We’re still a band just working hard. Our attitude is work and do well and do your shit.”

The journey hasn’t been without its missteps. In 2009, the Lionetti brothers—guitarist Ben and drummer Joe—left the band they co-founded with Palmeri. Unbowed, Palmeri and lead guitarist Jesse Ketive hooked up with guitarist Mike Mulholland and drummer Mike Kaabe. That lineup stayed intact until last year, when Kaabe defected and was replaced by Mike Castillo, formerly of Massachusetts’ Bury Your Dead.

“He was probably the missing link to the band all along,” Palmeri says of Castillo. “He’s just an irreplaceable person. He’s really brought something special that this band needed.”

What sets Emmure apart from the extreme music pack is that simmering beneath the guttural death grunts and pummeling hardcore thunder is an unabashed nu-metal sensibility that sometimes sounds like Korn-meets-Dimmu Borgir. Purists may cry blasphemy, but the scathing “Bison Diaries” or the Deftones-esque skull crusher “MDMA” won’t be denied, genre stereotyping be damned.

“Music is the bloodline for humanity,” Palmeri says. “And there are certain people where only certain things get in their blood. People are aggressive and are working 12-hour fucking days for fucking nothing. ‘Fuck your parents, fuck your job, fuck your code.’ Everybody goes through that.