By Zach Collier
Photos by Oliver Dahl
From Mormon missionaries to indie rock apostles, Roseburg has never done things the usual way. The Utah-based quartet has been quietly building their own revolution for nearly 10 years, brick by emotional brick. With their new single “The Earth,” the band delivers a sweeping, cinematic thunderclap that hits with the weight of everything they’ve lived through—and everything they’re still fighting for.
Frontman Zach Knell doesn’t mince words about what this song means: “The first day we took ‘The Earth’ to the studio, I came home and listened to an early mix and literally just cried. It feels like an echo from the past and a call for help to the future, all wrapped into one present moment. Years of anger. Years of joy. A deep cry for somebody to hear you.”
The song’s gripping message, coupled with incredible visuals by music video director Zhaun-Paul Draper, is taking the internet by storm. The official music video has racked up an impressive 20,000 views in a week.
Shot on location in Bandon, Oregon, the music video for “The Earth” features band members Zach Knell (vocals, guitar), Samuel Sheppard (lead guitar), Keith Lambson (drums), and Soren Buchert (bass) braving literal storms. Whether it’s Soren grooving on bass while getting absolutely decimated by rain and ocean spray or the band collectively raising an epic green flag and struggling to hold it in place in the wind atop a massive rock, the whole thing works as a beautiful visual metaphor for the silent internal struggles we all face.
If Roseburg has a genre, it’s “righteous punk”—a term they’ve worn like a badge through nearly a decade of evolution. Since their debut EP Heaven vs. Hollywood, Roseburg’s music has painted a painful portrait of what it’s like to have ideals crushed by reality. Their discography began with a youthful desire to buck tradition and find their own way in the world (see their dreamy, beachy first single “Stay Golden”).
Later songs like “Be Good” and “RIP” (featuring Kellin Quinn of Sleeping With Sirens) chronicled a descent into darkness, lost faith, heartbreak, and a desperate clinging to the last shreds of innocence.
Their most recent EP, 2 in a Million, found the band basking in the bittersweet light of second chances and joyous reunions in a reality very different from what they’d always hoped for. The album dropped after the band’s long, pandemic-induced hiatus.
Recent singles like “City of Angels” (whose story was featured on the cover of Provo Music Magazine last year) and now “The Earth” examine the painful price of wisdom and what it’s like to return home, changed forever.
“Writing ‘The Earth’ felt like a return to home for us,” says drummer Keith Lambson. “It was written incredibly quickly, much like the songs we wrote when we first started the band.”
“One of the things I love most about ‘The Earth’ is how authentic the studio recording is to our raw, live sound,” Knell says. The song was produced by the band and recorded and mixed by Scott Wiley at June Audio. That raw, live energy informed the sound of their entire upcoming record. “The Earth” will soon be accompanied by a live in-studio video. The song is the lead single of their upcoming sophomore album.
“The Earth” was recently praised by Grammy-winning producer Paul Meany (Twenty One Pilots, Mutemath, Pierce the Veil). “What a release,” he said on a livestream after listening to the song. “Y’all know what you’re doing, I love it! There’s a lot of great moves in there – it winds up being something very satisfying.”
There’s a lived-in energy to the track, something raw and unfiltered. You can hear that grit in every crashing cymbal and guttural lyric. No gloss, no pretense—just four musicians laying it all on the line.
Make sure to follow Roseburg on Instagram. Their live performance of “The Earth” drops this Friday.
