Archers of Loaf - Early History

Early History

Singer/guitarist Eric Bachmann, guitarist Eric Johnson, bassist Matt Gentling, and drummer Mark Price, all originally from Asheville, NC, formed Archers of Loaf in the early 1990s. Eric Bachmann was a saxophone major at Appalachian State before dropping out because he "didn't want to be a high school band director."

Their initial release in 1992 was a 45" single, with the A-side "Wrong" (B-side "South Carolina") given away free with issue 1 of Stay Free! magazine. Following the success of their independently released single "Wrong", the band signed with Alias records and released their second single "Web in Front" which garnered moderate college radio airplay. For a number of months in 1994, the video for "Web in Front" was the lone video played in between movies on the network USA's "Up All Night" feature on weekends. It also featured in a season five episode of Beavis and Butt-head, where its quality was roundly mocked. They released their debut full-length album, Icky Mettle, in 1994. It was critically well received, and is considered one of the landmark albums of 1990s alternative rock. In the 2008 book The Pitchfork 500, the prominent music website Pitchfork Media named "Web in Front" one of the top 500 songs of recent decades.

In 1994, the Archers released the EP Vs the Greatest of All Time. However, the song "The Greatest of All Time" does not appear on this release but rather the second full-length, Vee Vee. They released their second full-length album Vee Vee in 1995. Vee Vee followed a similar template as their previous recordings and featured the track "Harnessed in Slums", which became popular on college radio. The album also garnered significant attention outside the independent music scene, culminating in the band being courted by Maverick Records, a division of Warner Music Group, which the band rejected. Bachmann later stated that he and the band did not really consider the offer. The band was still under contract with Alias, and changing labels would put them into considerable debt to Maverick. According to Bachmann, "We already signed a deal and it costs lots of money to get out of these things. If we would have had Maverick buy out our contract, we'd be however many thousands of dollars in debt to them. It's really complex that way and it really didn't make sense to do that." The band had another reason for rejecting the Maverick offer: They did not want to be associated with the other high-profile bands on Maverick. "The other bands were that bad," said Price at the time. "There are other bands on major labels that are associated with a lot of shit but it's big enough that there are a least a few bands that you like. For us on Maverick, it'd be us and Candlebox and Alanis Morissette..."

In 1995 the band had its highest-profile tour opening for Weezer. The band's sometimes brash sound did not go over all that well with the Weezer crowd, and Gentling later said of the tour, "It wasn't as much that we didn't like the Weezer guys, but the opening bands get treated like crap by the people who work (at the venues). And as far as our music is concerned, I don't really know if we're all that compatible, at least live." In 1996 the band released The Speed of Cattle, a collection of B-sides, singles, and John Peel session tracks.