“No mass suicides.” He refills my water and passes it to me. “Just the best fucking experience of our fans’ lives. They’re gonna look back on the night they saw us and it’s gonna be a milestone they mark their other experiences by. I want to blow them away, you know? Put something positive out into the world. We want it to be like a resolution and an awakening all in one.”
Iri
ORPHEUS UNDERGROUNDdoesn't do things in half measures.
Thirteen years ago, we were nobodies. And in the time since, we’ve been busy little bees. Ten albums, nine international tours, thirty-four chart topping songs, and thirty million records sold.
Not bad for a bunch of monsters.
We’ve also won a ton of awards and have fans spread across every inch of the globe. From the tiny villages in the mountains of the Orcs, to the biggest cities in the world, we’ve got people that write us letters and film videos and send us shit they think we’d like.
We were also the first band to have a full monster line-up. Or the firstsuccessfulone, anyway. And sure, Dorian and Micah might pass as human at first glance, which made us a little more palatable when we were first starting out. But now there are bands with shifter front men, vampire bassists and nymphs on drums all over the business.
The four of us paved their fucking way, made it a lot smoother than it was for us crawling our way up.
Ten years of pretty much non-stop touring has been a lot. It’s been a whirlwind of late nights, shitty food, and sweating our asses off for hours to cram onto tour buses traveling overnight to get to our next location.
Thankfully, as our stars rose, things got nicer. The tour buses got bigger, along with the hotel rooms. But the breaks never seemed to get longer.
We’ve been in a cycle of touring, writing, rehearsing, and touring for an entire decade now.
And last year, there were signs we were cracking.
Cal’s always been quiet, but he’s taken to spending ninety percent of his time holed up in hotel rooms so he doesn’t have to face his adoring public. The same adoring public that hit on him every chance they get, that paw at his massive arms like he’s a tame bear released from the fucking zoo.
Dorian’s spent years partying in every spare hour he can find. I don’t know what the hell he gets up to, but it’s probably the tired old cliches: drinking, drugs, and fucking anyone and everyone.
The rest of us either lost our tolerance for that shit a while back, or never had it.
Micah’s the one I worry about most, though. He’s never been one to complain or to make his breakdowns public. But I can see the signs. The tiredness in his eyes, the way he squints like he’s hurting whenever he’s out in public. How he’s become as much of a homebody as Cal, even though he can’t do most of his favorite hobbies when we’re away from home.
Dude’s been falling apart on the inside, and I knew something had to give.
I noticed about eighteen months ago, my brothers would step off stage and they no longer looked like they could slay dragons and surf rainbows with the sheer fucking joy coming from their eyes.
Instead, they all just looked tired as fuck.
Miserable.
When we made noises, like we might need a break, the label came back with a bunch of bullshit about breaching our contract.
We offered them one last tour before we took a sabbatical and they came back with a load of noise about suing us if the tour isn’t a success.
They can go fuck themselves. My determination to make this tour a success has nothing to do with them.
No. I want it to be something incredible for the fans that have supported us, a thank you to them for putting aside petty bullshit and prejudice and backing us all the way.
My bandmates are my brothers. My only family—other than my mother, who, as a literal chaos demon, thrives on fucking drama. Seriously, she keeps trying to set me up with crazy geriatric witches because she thinks it’s funny and those ladies have no shame. Which means my bandmates are the only family I actually want to spend time with.
And we all have our own reasons for doing what we do. I’m not saying we choose to be rock stars because we’re well adjusted. We all need an outlet, and until now this has been what works.
I fucking need this tour to be next level. I need the guys to rediscover that spark of joy from playing music to people who get us on a visceral level.
If this tour doesn’t bring them back to themselves, I don’t know what will.
Chapter 5
Iri
