Returning four years after their last album, Conquering, Employed to Serve continue to showcase their growth and evolution. Not one to stay in one lane, their metalcore meets thrash meets fill-in-the-blank keeps listeners on their toes as they move through their soon to be released effort Fallen Star. We sat down with guitarist/vocalist Sammy Urwin and vocalist Justine Jones to get their perspectives on the record. We also discuss working as a married couple, heavy metal unity, and how their work outside the band with Church Road Records and Since Always PR impacts their role as musicians.
Dead Rhetoric: Fallen Star is your first album in four years. How do you feel it defines what Employed to Serve is about in 2025?
Sammy Urwin: I feel it’s more of a solid statement about where we are at musically. When we did our last album, Conquering, we had a huge line-up change in the band, and since we have been slowly but surely going down a more metallic route, once we got our drummer Casey [McHale] on board, he had an ability to enable us to write more extreme metal parts into songs. Our previous drummer was more of a groove guy, Casey is more of a double-pedal, metal drummer. So the floodgates were essentially opened for us to go in this more metallic direction. That saw a large jump from Eternal Forward Motion to Conquering. Now I feel like Fallen Star has given us time to breathe. This new line-up has been in the band now for five years.
Justine Jones: I feel like we spent more time on it as well. It came a lot easier for us. It was really nice to know each other as well as we do now as musicians, to make the best record we could. Not that Conquering was a bad record, it was just us getting used to each other.
Urwin: It’s the biggest jump we’ve had, stylistically. As much as we are still super proud of that record, Fallen Star is a better example of us expanding on Conquering but also acknowledging some of the other stuff we did in the past to make it a bigger and better whole, really.
Dead Rhetoric: As you mentioned, Fallen Star also features the same line-up as Conquering. Do you feel that led to more productive writing and working together?
Jones: Absolutely. It’s a well oiled machine at this point. You probably get it in most things in life. You get to know them better and collaborate better. Things flow easier, and you feel more comfortable bringing forth ideas, and that’s how this has felt.
Urwin: It’s having that outsider’s perspective as well. I do quite a lot of the writing for the band. This album has contributions from David [Porter], our other guitarist, writing a lot of the riffs on “Brother Stand Beside Me” and “From This Day Forward.” But aside from actual contributions of riffs and ideas, it’s nice to hear different opinions in general. I think anyone, but myself definitely included in this, can get stuck inside your own work. It was the other members who were like, “hey, the dynamics were a bit lacking on the last album a bit, we kind of liked your previous records.” They weren’t members yet but they said it had more peaks and valleys and the songs kind of went places rather than being at 10 the whole time.
So it’s nice to hear other opinions on what you are writing as well. It’s a horrible terminology, but it’s the whole ‘killing your babies’ thing. You are so deeply involved. You need someone to come in and say, “that’s cool but maybe you should try this or get rid of that.” Or that maybe the guitar solo doesn’t need to be 20 minutes long.
Dead Rhetoric: That said, you two have been the center of the band since the beginning. Do you ping pong ideas back and forth all the time? I talked to Chaney [Crabb] from Entheos and she was saying how her and Navene perpetually just go back and forth at all times of the day.
Jones: We definitely do. We work together, live together, and are married. We sort of [talk] on the regular. You spend all day with each other, so you have random thoughts, like “let’s do this!” It’s really handy. We always throw ideas at each other. We have a band WhatsApp group. We absolutely inundate it with new ideas.
Urwin: Sometimes Justine will come up with lyrics, completely aside from it being written for a demo in particular. Sometimes you need that to get started. Putting lyrics to a song, it just fits perfectly with something I have been working on. Like Justine says, we are kind of in each other’s pockets so much that we do have the luxury of being able to bounce ideas back and forth. Working on demos as well, a lot of our writing, doesn’t take place in the practice room. A lot of it, like many bands these days, it’s done on a laptop. We have the ability to pull things apart, and cutting/pasting. I might have written a part and then Justine offers suggestions, and then we’ll go with that. Collaboration is always best. It’s hard to do everything yourself.
Dead Rhetoric: You have several guests on the album. What did you like about reaching out and collaborating with others for Fallen Star? Seeing how you just mentioned collaboration…
Urwin: It’s exciting. You never know. I mean you have an idea. When you have someone like Will Ramos doing a guest vocal you get an idea of what it will sound like in your head. But the really cool thing about that guest spot was that we had no idea that he would do singing on it. When we got in touch with him initially, it was like, “Can you do this verse? This is what we had in mind.” We always leave the door open to get creative. We come with a brief bit, but let them do what they want.
Jones: We try to make it as easy as possible for people guesting. It’s kind of hard, and there’s not always a lot of time. So we always have demos and things for people to listen to. But it was pretty awesome that Will did his own thing.
Urwin: I think the same could be said for Jesse [Leach] as well. I think initially we had the screaming bit in mind for him at the end, and then said, get creative with it. He took it upon himself to add the bits in the chorus. I think it’s interesting. All of the collaborations we have on the record are great. The real magical bits are the bits where the collaborators took it upon themselves to add something.
Jones: They sometimes think of things you wouldn’t think of, they have their own viewpoint.
Urwin: A shout out to our friend Serena [Cherry] who guests on the song “Last Laugh.” Her guest spot, for me, on that song is just perfect. It really makes that song as well.
Jones: Neither me or Sammy can vocally do that. It’s the sort of peak of my comfort zone.
Urwin: Even more hilariously, I had a shot at singing it.
Jones: If he upsets me, I might just leak it [laughter]. All the voice breaking. It’s the frequency of a lapdog [laughs].
Urwin: Lower as well, it didn’t work. When I was singing it up high, it was like I trying to be like The BeeGees.
Jones: It’s really funny, because it just perfectly fits Serena’s range. She just lives in that high-register range. She’s great at it.
Urwin: Speaking of dynamics as well, it was exactly what the song needed, that four to the floor. Those chugging guitars and Serena’s serene, ethereal voice just gives it what it’s needed for sure.
Dead Rhetoric: Talk about your slogan for “Heavy Metal Unity.” Where are you pulling it from, since I know you have been doing it for a bit now?
Jones: We liked the idea that you can come to a metal show and be welcomed. The fact that because you are a metal fan, you already have something in common with all of these people no matter what walk of life you are from. It’s just a comforting thing, for example, when you go to festivals like Download or Wacken, you see different generations of people. You see like, your parents and their kids, you see young people, older people. It’s really nice that there are so many people who are all into the same music.
Urwin: It has been a phenomenon for years where it’s such a massive music scene, but it almost completely flies under the mainstream radar. It’s more of a culture. We are ones that don’t shy away…sometimes we feel like the term heavy metal can seem uncool or unpopular. We didn’t necessarily see it in our favor sometimes. It’s cool to say you are a heavy metal band and sometimes it’s deeply uncool to say it. For us, we are the ones to hold it up and say that it’s something that it is worth celebrating. Like Justine said, when you go to a show and you are surrounded by like-minded people, that feeling of singing along with your favorite bands…we say this as fans ourselves, on the other side of cool. That feeling is so electric. Some people might say that it’s cheesy to think like that, but it’s true. I think everyone has had those kind of experiences when you go to a show and it all connects. Being in a room with like-minded people and singing the words to your favorite song, it just has such an uplifting quality to it.
Jones: Yeah, when you go to a show and you have something in common with all of these people and want to chat, you can be like, “hey this new album is great huh?” It’s nice. You don’t get that in every day life, in a coffee shop. It’s hard to break the ice.
Urwin: It’s a universal language as well. You can not speak the same language as someone and if you see a shirt, you immediately have this huge thing in common. You get psyched to talk about it. That’s where that is coming from. We also kind of like it as we feel it represents us as well. We are on different ends of the heavy metal spectrum. We have our different influences as well. I don’t listen to a lot of the same music, we are quite different in our day to day basis. But we come together as pieces of this whole to make the music that we make.
Dead Rhetoric: I do have to strongly agree with what you said about talking at a show. I’m super introverted but when it’s concert time, I’m like, “let’s go!” and talk the whole time through set changes.
Urwin: Yeah, we are just outside of London so we are quite fortunate. But the town we live in is quite small. I know for me going up, and I think it’s the same for Justine. There weren’t a load of people who were into heavy metal.
Jones: It’s hard to drag your friends to shows. I’ll just go on my own and make friends. I’ve made so many friends being into the genre. It’s pretty cool.
Urwin: I used to drag my dad along, but as soon as it started to get Cannibal Corpse, he was starting to get like, “ehh, just go by yourself.”
Dead Rhetoric: How does this then move into the idea of having positive lyrics instead of focusing on the negative?
Urwin: I think we try to tread carefully. Even though we have a positive outlook on life, we never want to be like, stuffing it down people’s throats.
Jones: Like the ‘oh you are depressed, have you tried not being depressed?” That’s not helpful for anyone. But it’s about acknowledging the dark parts of life and the bad feelings, but also shedding light on the good parts. Also, persevering through the bad times. I think about it as positive music in a very negative world.
Urwin: I feel we keep referring to this album a bit of a callback to our first couple of albums. We also had a sun on The Warmth of a Dying Sun album and that was a really negative record through and through. It’s basically the sun is setting on all of the stuff in life you enjoy and you are quite scared about what the future holds.
Jones: We were in our early 20s and you kind of go through that period where you aren’t a teenager. You are hurling towards adulthood but feel like you don’t have your shit together. Those two albums were very much about that. Like, where has time gone?
Urwin: Like, where is all of this leading to? The thing is, in life, there is always going to be the high and low times. I feel like the last five years or so have been quite difficult for many people, through the pandemic and all of the other things going on in the world.
Jones: It’s quite tedious, isn’t it? It’s just been one after another, we are already on the ropes!
Urwin: We kind of shroud it in metaphors, and we never say outwardly exactly what the music is about, it’s more a narrative about certain aspects of our lives. We are getting to an age where we realize we are still pissed off and angry about stuff and heavy metal will always be the type of music that channels those types of feelings. But it’s about how we can deal with them and put it into something productive.
Jones: It’s about having the hindsight at this age, being in our early 30s now, and I actually really enjoyed turning into my 30s. You just become more comfortable and confident about what you want. You have experienced enough bad things and gotten through them that it’s going to be fine. It’s really nice to have younger fans listening to our music and being like, “I’ve got this, it’s going to be alright.” You can look back and it’s not going to be that bad.
Urwin: I feel like you can get in your own way a little bit. That’s what a lot of the songs are about, at least from my standpoint. You can let your anger or frustration upset things. I think the title for our last record, Conquering, a lot of people were kind of seeing that as ‘we are here to conquer and dominate the world.”
Jones: Dominate your speakers! [laughter]
Urwin: But from a mental standpoint, it’s talking about conquering my own mind. Otherwise you let your anger and frustration get the better of you. You self-implode. You can use the anger and frustration in a positive way to do something productive.
Dead Rhetoric: I think you’re right. A lot of that does come with age and experience. Being able to extend your outlook and say, ‘this sucks, but there’s a light somewhere at the end of the tunnel.”
Jones: Yeah, it’s nice. It’s like, you got this, you just have to buckle down.
Urwin: It’s about finding the enjoyment in every aspect of what you do. In how negative the first few records were, it was reflected in our live show. We have always been the people we are, off stage, but on stage we wouldn’t be rude…
Jones: He was so aggy.
Urwin: Not being rude, but it was quite aggressive and almost to the point where I would throw myself off stage and sometimes people would catch me and sometimes they wouldn’t. I think, I don’t know, for me it didn’t feel like a sustainable way of moving forward. Now, rather than trying to be mean and moody on stage, which is not who we are as people, I like to be able to smile and enjoy playing the riffs. There’s a different energy to our live show now versus what it was seven years ago. That’s nice. Then playing a set, instead of hurting yourself and getting angry at someone or something, it’s more enjoyable for everyone involved.
Dead Rhetoric: Given unity, and the evolving sound of Employed to Serve, how do you feel about the subgenre name game?
Jones: We piss a lot of people off with that. It depends on the album. We sort of hop around boxes all the time. A little bit less so on this record. There’s more metal, but there is still some post- or -core in there somewhere.
Urwin: To go back to that song that Serena guests on, that was our love letter to HIM. So you can take some of our songs, like “Familiar Pain,” or “Now My Kingdom Come” are quite thrashy too.
Jones: It’s hard, we are just fans of music and especially metal, of all genres. We have never really sat anywhere. We have listened to so much stuff. I’m sure you have it as well in being a reviewer and listening to so much music. It’s hard to listen to the same genre or it’s going to do your head in. You listen to music all day and it’s going to seep in.
Urwin: I think if you had to pigeonhole it, and it’s going to seem like such a lame way to describe it, but I guess if you have to lump us in somewhere, we are in some degree a metalcore band. There’s heavy metal influences, and there’s also hardcore obviously. But we are more progressive than being a straight-up metalcore band. There’s elements coming from here, there, and everywhere.
Jones: We leave it to the YouTube commenters. They love it. That’s their thing. They love telling us what we are. It brings them happiness [laughs].
Dead Rhetoric: Being involved with a label, running PR, in addition to being in a band. What continues to fuel your love of all things music?
Jones: We are just consumed by it. We love it. We always have. I’ve been a huge fan of music since my first Justin Timberlake album when I was not even double digits.
Urwin: Justified, shout out! Great record.
Jones: Great record. I had Spice Girls on tape as well. Ever since then, I wanted to collect music. I wanted to know everything about all of the artists. That just has gotten stronger as I have gotten older and have expendable income and not relying on pocket money. I did the band while working in retail and other things, and I hated it. Even though I am very busy. I feel like I have three jobs. But it’s so much more rewarding. I wouldn’t have it any other way. Unless someone can pay me for reading.
Urwin: Professional Kindle reader. Yeah, I think we both want to work in music, regardless of the band. I think we were lucky to get things up and running with Church Road [Records]. To have the advantage of being, in some degree, our own bosses. We can work while we are touring. It’s an amazing thing to be able to do. It does free us up to be able to do tour offers in short notice.
Jones: Because of how I’m wired, I really struggle working for people. I like that I can also flip around, it really suits me and how I work. That’s another thing. I think I’d struggle in a normal job.
Urwin: We absolutely love it and it keeps us on our toes. Especially doing the label. It’s just me and Justine. We have to wear numerous hats. That’s how we got into the press side of things, because we were doing 99% of the press campaigns for the label. Justine was ordering all of the stock, I am doing mail order. Some bands need help booking shows, so we just help out all over. Like you were saying Justine, it keeps things interesting.
Jones: We don’t have time to be bored.
Urwin: For example, I love doing the mail order and seeing the records going out.
Jones: You feel like Santa with all the records going out.
Urwin: Exactly! We are very lucky to be in a situation that we are surrounded by music all the time. We keep finding ways to keep staying enthusiastic. Kind of going back to what we were talking about earlier, being a fan first and foremost. For me, I think that’s the longevity of learning to work in this industry. You have to maintain that in some degree, that enthusiasm you had as a teenager when you first heard your favorite band. You have to cultivate that energy to make sure the fire is always burning.
Jones: I like to do things that will make my inner 14 year old stoked.
Dead Rhetoric: What do you feel you’ve learned by having your toes in the water with other aspects of the business and not just the music part? What are your biggest takeaways of having the full knowledge of things?
Jones: No one knows what they are doing. There are people who are very good at their jobs, but no one can predict a band’s success or lack of it. You can do everything right and a band might not take off. It’s like betting on horses. There’s no formula to this, you just go along and huff and puff. It’s quite nice in that way. You know you are doing everything right because you have talked to enough other people and worked with other bands. Everyone is just trying their best.
Urwin: Consistency and working smartly. It’s good to be into everything, but I have seen time and time again, and we are guilty of this as well, but you want to get out and tour loads but I have seen bands who tour themselves into the ground. They will be a husk of a human being and it isn’t necessarily helping further them as a band. It’s putting pressure on the members, since you have to leave your home to do it. So working smart and with tenacity. Just sticking with it.
Jones: I think it’s really tenacity over talent. You can be the most talented person ever, but if you aren’t tenacious enough to get out there and play, you won’t ever do much.
Urwin: You have to put the blinders on, as hard as it is, and we all do a bit of self-comparison now and again.
Jones: I love doing that, just thinking, “who is better than me today” [laughs].
Urwin: But the thing is, because I have had conversations with people about performance. I know full well there are people out there who can play guitar with their feet.
Jones: There’s a child who is better than you…
Urwin: If you sit there and worry about that, then you get nothing done. Some of my favorite artists in the world aren’t technically the best, but you like them for what they do. It has always been in my mind, but it’s been hammered home over the years of doing this. Being true to yourself and being consistent. You can be influenced by people in a positive way to get the fire going, but don’t let the outside noise distract you from what you are working on.
Dead Rhetoric: Finally, what are your plans for the rest of the year?
Jones: Get rich! We have a tour around the album release, which is exciting. We are playing a London show on release day. We will have a party at our show. It’s nice because usually we get together when we release an album and have a few drinks together, but it’ll be nice to have outsiders there. We also have some festivals coming up too. We are hoping to do an extensive European tour at the end of this year. America at some point…things are a bit spicy at the moment so I imagine it might be challenging to get over there. We will wait it out.
Urwin: So touring as relentlessly as possible. That’s basically what we have on the to-do list.
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