10 Years

Tennessee rock outfit 10 Years arrived at the dawn of the 2000s with a distinctive Southern-inflected approach to the brooding textures, weighty impact, and confrontational energy of contemporary rock, merging post-grunge, hard rock, and alternative metal into a flexible sound. Their third album overall, the gold-certified The Autumn Effect, propelled the group into widespread recognition, a position they have sustained through later charting releases including Feeding the Wolves (2010), From Birth to Burial (2015), and Violent Allies (2020). In 2022 they issued Deconstructed, an album-length collection of newly interpreted renditions drawn from the preceding ten years of material.

The band originated in Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1999. Founding members guitarist Ryan “Tater” Johnson and drummer Brian Vodinh assembled the initial roster alongside lead vocalist Mike Underdown, guitarist Matt Wantland, and bassist Lewis Cosby; Cosby exited in 2001 and was replaced on bass by Andy Parks. Later that year the quintet recorded and independently released their debut effort, Into the Half Moon, then began building momentum through extensive touring. Underdown departed the frontman role in 2002, prompting the recruitment of Jesse Hasek as lead singer; Cosby soon rejoined on bass, and the reconfigured lineup self-released a second collection, Killing All That Holds You, in 2004.

Growing audience interest led to a contract with Republic Records, whose first release for the group, The Autumn Effect, surfaced in 2005. The track “Wasteland” reached the summit of the Billboard Alternative Songs chart and earned gold status, after which the band appeared on the 2006 Family Values tour with Deftones and Korn. Their follow-up Republic album, Division, emerged in 2008, while Feeding the Wolves arrived in 2010; the latter was tracked after Wantland’s departure, with Vodinh contributing extra guitar parts in the studio. Following that release, Republic and 10 Years ended their association, leading the group to establish its own Pale Horse Records imprint through Warner Music’s Independent Label Group.

Pale Horse’s inaugural project, Minus the Machine, appeared in 2011 and entered the Billboard Top 200 at number 26 while peaking at number eight on the Top Current Rock Albums tally. The second Pale Horse album, From Birth to Burial, followed in 2015 and coincided with Cosby’s second exit; the official configuration then contracted to a trio of Hasek, Johnson, and Vodinh, supplemented onstage by additional players including guitarist Chad Huff, bassist Ryan Collier, and drummer Kyle Mayer. Their eighth studio set, (How to Live) As Ghosts, surfaced in late 2017; produced by Nick Raskulinecz, the record ascended high on several Billboard hard-rock charts. In 2019 the band traveled to a Los Angeles facility to work with Grammy-winning producer Howard Benson on their ninth full-length, whose lead single “The Shift” introduced a socially engaged collection that reached number 18 on the Billboard Hard Rock Albums chart upon its 2020 release as Violent Allies. Two years afterward they delivered the digital-only Deconstructed, comprising nineteen pared-back reinterpretations of signature tracks.