About this artist
Often described as “the spearhead of the whole modern progressive metalcore movement,” Birmingham, Alabama’s Erra combine the frontal assault of extreme metal with an adventurous sense of melody and precise stop-and-start arrangements. Emerging in the early 2010s, the technical metalcore band entered the mainstream in 2013 with the release of their sophomore effort, Augment, which topped the Billboard Heatseekers chart. They found similar success on subsequent efforts Drift (2016) and Neon (2018), and in 2021 they issued their acclaimed fifth long-player, Erra.
Influenced by acts such as Misery Signals, As I Lay Dying, Born of Osiris, and Saosin, Erra were formed in 2009 by guitarist and clean vocalist Jesse Cash and scream vocalist Garrison Lee. Eager to move their musical ideas forward, Cash and Lee recruited their friends Adam Hicks and Alex Ballew to play bass and drums in the new group. The lineup was finalized when they discovered guitarist Alan Rigdon through his MySpace page, and they adopted the name Erra, a word referring to mayhem that can be traced back to the mythology of Akkad. In 2010, the group self-released their debut EP, Andromeda, and good reviews and an enthusiastic response from fans led to the band signing with indie label Tragic Hero Records.
In 2011, Erra released their first full-length album, Impulse, which along with extensive touring helped raise their profile on the independent metal scene, leading to tours alongside August Burns Red, Born of Osiris, and Tesseract. In 2012, bassist Adam Hicks announced he was leaving the group to focus on his education, but he stayed with Erra long enough to finish work on their second LP, Augment, which was released in the fall of 2013, and became their first album to chart. The following year saw the release of the Moments of Clarity EP, with their third studio long-player, the Sumerian-issued Drift, appearing in early 2016, which like 2018′s well-received Neon, debuted at number one on the U.S. Heatseekers chart.
Erra parted ways with Sumerian in 2020 and made a lateral move to Aussie heavy music label UNFD, which released their eponymous fifth full-length effort the following year. When not on the road with Erra, Jesse Cash records and performs with his side project, Ghost Atlas. ~ Mark Deming