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Up and down Morganton Road, out near the Loudon County line, the only sound is the July wind rolling out of the north, bringing with it fat gray clouds and the half-hearted promise of rain.

In a modest neighborhood not far from Clover Hill Road, party-goers strain their ears, hoping to hear the rumbling diesel engine of an approaching bus. It’s running late, and the only sounds coming from the nearby thoroughfare are the muted sounds of car traffic.

Just because they don’t hear it, however, doesn’t mean it’s not coming. At the foot of a sloped driveway, bags are packed and gear is stacked — black road cases, containing guitars and other instruments that generate rock ’n’ roll so intense they might as well be cases full of automatic weapons. On a strip of lime-green tape attached to each, a single word is written: Whitechapel.

Three years ago, the guys in Whitechapel — three of whom grew up in Blount County and still call it home — were just another local rock band, rattling loose light fixtures at the Springbrook Rec Center in Alcoa and harboring the same rock ’n’ roll fantasies of anyone who’s ever stepped on stage with an electric guitar. Today, those dreams are a reality — the band is signed to Metal Blade Records, a respected purveyor of heavy rock. The group recently returned from its third tour of Europe and has played for thousands of fans across the country. And on this Thursday afternoon, they’re waiting for that bus — their own, provided by the label for a 30-date, six-week tour that begins Tuesday in Nevada.

‘Never in a million years’

“Never in a million years!” laughed guitarist Alex Wade, a 2004 graduate of Maryville High School, when asked if he ever thought, back during the band’s Springbrook days, that Whitechapel might someday have its own tour bus. “None of us ever thought we’d go this far, and we’re really excited. This tour is so big that you just can’t do it without a bus. A lot of the dates are at outdoor amphitheaters, and a bus is someplace we can go hang out before we play. We’ll be able to rest better, which means we’ll play better, so it’s a good investment for everybody.”

To celebrate, the band and a couple dozen family members and friends have gathered on this afternoon at the home of Pam and Steve Crisp, parents of Whitechapel bass player Gabe Crisp (who graduated from William Blount High in 2004). Barbecue sandwiches are served, drinks are iced down and photos are taken. A huge banner with the band’s logo is unveiled in the backyard, and in between phone calls checking on the status of the bus and packing for departure not long after it arrives, the guys reflect on their dizzying climb to heights most rockers never see.

“We never thought this was going to happen,” said guitarist Zach Householder, a 2003 graduate of MHS who joined the band in the summer of 2007 after stints in such local groups as This Is Renaissance and Radio Deadspace. “For me, this was my last shot at music. I knew Whitechapel had potential, and I loved these guys before I joined, but I was about to get out of it all together. I’d already decided to go back to school and decided to give it one more chance when they asked me.”
It’s a fairy tale, in a way, for everyone who’s part of the Whitechapel family.

Householder remembers sitting in his bedroom as a teen, playing guitar to live recordings by bands like Metallica, hardly daring to consider a day when he might be part of a band that inspires other young musicians. For Pam and Steve Crisp, it’s even more surreal — the boys used to rehearse in the Crisp garage, and back then the noise that shook pots and pans in her kitchen seemed as far removed from success as anything she’d ever heard.

“It’s definitely not my kind of music,” she said diplomatically, keeping an eye on drinks and food and an ear on any oversized traffic — a bus, maybe — that might turn down their suburban street. “But whatever Gabe has done, we’ve always been behind him. It’s a different generation, like Gabe says, and even though we may not have liked it, we supported him. But we never dreamed it would come to this.

“I remember they would play so loud that I would worry about the neighbors, and I always made them practice early so they wouldn’t disturb the neighborhood. Plus, I always fed them, and I know they liked that.”

Growing crowds

News — generator problems have delayed the tour bus in Lebanon, Tenn. A 3 p.m. arrival is pushed back, and the guys gather in the Crisp living room to play CDs and hang out. The tour manager and a friend who accompanies the band on tour to sell merchandise go through boxes of Whitechapel gear — T-shirts and jerseys and stickers and hats, box upon box full of them. By the middle of August, most of it will be gone, snatched up by fans who flock to Whitechapel shows for both release and therapy — angst and adrenaline and seething rage unleashed for one hour in the pit, bodies slamming against one another while the six members of the band thunder above it all like Norse gods.

For Phil Bozeman — Whitechapel singer with a voice 10 times bigger than his body who went to Karns High School in Knoxville — it’s always been about the fans.
“We’re not playing this to be cool — we’re playing to make fans and make a living at it,” he said. “Back in high school, I thought I might be playing somewhere, but I figured it would be at a local bar or something. I never thought we would be going all over the world and playing to fans who know the lyrics and know how each song goes.”

From the beginning, however, local metal fans knew there was something different about Whitechapel. For those familiar with their historical serial killers, the name is synonymous with the impoverished district of London where Jack the Ripper brutally murdered several prostitutes in 1888. It’s an apropos moniker, because the brutality of the band’s approach to its particular genre — death metal — leaves fans feeling like Jack the Ripper is pouring gasoline down their ear canals and tossing in a lit match.

The band formed when Wade and Bozeman formed a friendship over the Internet. Neither was satisfied with the directions in which their old bands were headed and decided to strike out on their own, forming Whitechapel. The group used Myspace to garner a groundswell of support, taking top honors at Battle of the Bands competition hosted by the Knox Scene Coalition, The Daily Times Weekend section and other organizations; held at Springbrook, it drew enough Whitechapel supporters to put the band over the top of stiff competitors. A few lineup changes later (drummer Kevin Lane joined in November 2006, followed by Householder the following summer) and the band released the album “The Somatic Defilement” on Siege of Amida Records. Last year, they made the jump to Metal Blade, releasing “This Is Exile” and garnering larger and larger followings at shows across the country, many with top-name metal acts.

“When we first started touring, we just wanted to see what would happen,” said lead guitarist Ben Savage. “That first tour, we played in some real dumps — sometimes there were only two people in the crowd, including the promoter. But gradually the crowds started getting bigger and bigger, and when every show turned out nice and full, we realized we had something special going on.”

Hometown boys

The difference, Steve Crisp said, is that the six guys in Whitechapel aren’t just talented musicians — they’re furious performers, entertainers who harness the energy made by fans and music and channel it into a razor-sharp blade of intensity. By the end of a set, the crowd is in the palm of the band’s hands, waiting at the merchandise table for autographs, bumping chests and (sometimes) punching one another to release leftover adrenaline.

Over the years, the guys have experienced their share of the craziness that goes hand-in-hand with life as a touring rock band. There was the time in Virginia, Householder remembers, when he walked into the middle of an argument between two fans in which a firearm was involved; then there was the time in Texas, Savage recalls with a laugh, that the guys took pity on a fan in a wheelchair and lifted him onto the stage — only to discover he was drunk, belligerent and intent on stealing the microphone from Bozeman and rolling around each band member like a stunt driver threading an obstacle course.

But for every crazy moment, there are others that never cease to instill amazement — meeting Dino Cazares of the metal band Fear Factory after performing at the House of Blues on Sunset Strip in Hollywood ... watching dozens of kids crammed into an Illinois VFW hall sweating and screaming and climbing over one another as the music propelled them to paganistic heights of celebration ... launching into a set on the other side of the world, in Australia, and encountering hundred of fans who knew the words to every song.

It’s been a long, strange, sometimes-crazy, often-wonderful trip ... and with East Tennessee roots that keep them grounded (Savage graduated from Powell High in Knoxville in 2006, and Lane hails from Kingsport), it’s a trip that doesn’t look to end any time soon.

In fact, with a bus that finally arrives around 9 p.m., an equipment trailer in tow and a five-day drive to Nevada ahead of them, it seems like the road might just go on forever. And even if it doesn’t, there will still be plenty of stories, ones that rock ‘n’ roll magic are made of, about the band that once rocked Blount County teens in a small-town rec center and now rides in luxury to a Nevada gig and, beyond that, a major traveling festival sponsored by Rockstar Energy Drink and featuring such bands as Marilyn Manson, Slayer and Killswitch Engage.

Whitechapel isn’t the headliner, obviously — at this stage of the game, they still carry and tune their own equipment, haul their own gear and work twice as hard as other bands who travel with technicians and roadies. But to have come this far in this amount of time ... well, it’s not so far-fetched these days to think that one day, three guys from Blount County might join their bandmates on the main stage and melt the faces off of thousands.

“People from high school who don’t really know me are like, ‘Oh, you’re a big rock star now,’” Wade said, “but it’s really not like they think it is. I mean, it’s glamorous in the way that I’ve been to Australia and that I’ve seen the Eiffel Tower, but we still work really hard. And when it comes down to it, I tell everybody that even though I’ve been all over the world, my favorite place is Maryville.

“The family, the closeness ... it’s home. It’s where we come to relax, and when we get here, Gabe and I like to go up to Fort Loudoun Lake and sit all day and just fish.”