After spending anxious months wondering if it would win MTV’s “Battle for Ozzfest” competition, Dallas quintet A Dozen Furies was obviously relieved when it emerged the victor. But landing the prize — which included a second-stage slot on the metal festival and a contract with Sanctuary Records — doesn’t mean that its Ozzfest-related challenges are over.
On the show, eight finalists, each representing an unsigned band, were loaded onto a tour bus and competed against each other in various challenges. Guitarist Marc Serrano led his group to the finale: a battle of the bands between A Dozen Furies and Cynder. Performing for judges Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne was high pressure, as was having to deliver to the crowd at Ozzfest during the July 15 tour kickoff in Mansfield, Mass.
“Everyone [in A Dozen Furies is] familiar with playing live shows, so that’s nothing new,” vocalist Bucky Garrett tells Billboard.com. “But to do it in front of around 10,000 the first day was pretty intimidating. But we just go out there and grab ahold of the crowd and take them on a journey.”
As A Dozen Furies promised in its bio, the group treated itself to a luxurious RV (having spent two other tours traveling in a gutted-out van with a mattress) and is showing its state pride by staking a Texas flag tarp outside the vehicle.
Inside, written on a mirror are the figures 104 and 217 — the number of $5 CDs the band sold of its 2003 EP, “Rip the Stars Down,” at the FYE tent on Ozzfest’s first two dates.
Garrett says it’s a goal to increase those numbers at every show. Having gotten some flack from people who assume the group is a made-for-MTV act, A Dozen Furies is pouring itself into its performances to gain respect from one of metal’s toughest audiences.
“I’ve heard so many people come up and say, ‘You guys just made a fan of me today. I was kind of skeptical,'” he says. “To look over and see other bands that we are into watching [from the side of the stage] and for Bury Your Dead or some other band to come up and say, ‘You guys are the real deal, man,’ that’s fulfilling to hear.”
On off dates, A Dozen Furies is playing its own shows with such Ozzfest acts as Trivium, It Dies Today, the Black Dahlia Murder, the Haunted and Arch Enemy. In the fall, the group will hit the road again in support of its debut full-length, due Sept. 13.
Garrett says the band loves how the album came out, and he thinks it has found itself on the record: “It might be a step away from the mainstream as opposed to our first EP, but we still have really catchy choruses, so people that aren’t really into the hardcore metal scene and that style of music can still grab ahold of the choruses.”
