About Eighteen Visions
Eighteen Visions is an American metalcore band from Orange County, California, formed in October 1995. The band broke up in April 2007, less than a year after their major label debut was released through Epic and Trustkill Records. After over a decade of absence, the band reformed in 2017. They announced their sixth album, XVIII, would be released via their new label home at Rise Records.
Eighteen Visions was founded in October 1995 by James Hart, Dave Peters, Billy Sisler, and Kenneth Floyd under the name "Macabre". The band wrote a bit of material and started to play shows, beginning at the "Koo's Cafe" in early 1996, in their local area. Soon after, Excessive Force's Jeff Boullt was added to the mix as a second guitarist, and in March, Sisler left the group and was replaced by Richie Taylor. Taylor only lasted a short while, and Javier Van Huss soon took over the bass duties. Later in the year, Boullt also left the band, and Brandan Schieppati was added to complete the group's first stable line-up.
In a 2017 interview, Hart explained that the band got the name Eighteen Visions from a lyric off the song "Slipping Through the Hands of God", though he could not recall the name of the song. The lyric stated "I depict eighteen visions for its demise". Hart explained that the number eighteen came from the number of the beast, as 6+6+6 = 18. Hart elaborated that at the time he was anti-religion and anti-Christianity, and as a 16 year old metalhead, was trying to write the most evil thing he could think of. He stated that the name holds no weight or depth towards the band or any of its members, but was "something that sounded super cool back in 1996."
Their debut release, Lifeless was released on Life Sentence Records in 1997. Shortly after, Peters left the band to focus on playing with Throwdown , and Steve Parilla replaced him for the EP's tour. The first full-length album, Yesterday Is Time Killed was released by Cedargate Records in March 1999. The band was brought to the attention Trustkill Records, which was still in its early beginnings. The label released the No Time for Love 7-inch in October 1999. Keith Barney, Schieppati's bandmate in Throwdown, then joined the band to replace Parilla. Ten months after the 7-inch, their second full-length Until the Ink Runs Out was released. It became one of the label's best-selling albums, which led to a lot of the band's earlier material getting bought out and going out of print.
In November 2000, it was announced that Eighteen Visions would be doing a split 7-inch vinyl with Poison the Well for Undecided Records. The split for Undecided Records was to feature a Metallica cover from each of the bands as part of the record label's Crush 'Em All series, which had already seen a split by Shai Hulud and BoySetsFire released as Volume 1 in March 2000. Poison the Well and Eighteen Visions were to be the third release in the series with a tentative release date for the summer of 2001. In January 2001, the Crush 'Em All series switched from 7-inch vinyl to compact discs. Due to complications with Trustkill Records the two bands were unable to recorded their songs and the split was shelved. Javier was asked to leave the band after touring for Until the Ink Runs Out, and was told he would be replaced by Mick Morris of the band xClearx. Javier played two remaining shows with the band and went on to tour for Poison the Well.
For their next album, The Best of Eighteen Visions, the band re-recorded some of their earlier material, some of which was out of print, with the addition of a new song, "Motionless and White". Trustkill and the band felt it would feel much more like a new record, rather than re-releasing the two previous albums on the label. The vinyl version was released in Europe through Sober Mind Records. Despite raw production where mistakes weren't always edited, the album was a vast improvement in production values. This would mark the beginning of the band's tentative approach to more melodic hardcore, rather than their older metalcore approach.
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