But following a stint of nonstop touring and frustration with their management and label, the band went on a permanent hiatus as soon as the touring cycle for their 2005 debut album, A Concept From Fire, wrapped early the following year.
"Honestly, none of us really wanted to stop," says drummer Mike Miller. "We were hitting it pretty hard, trying to make everything work. And then we all took a break. Then, two years later, we got back together to write and stuff. Just by that time, people had kids and families and stuff like that. So it was just hard to get our schedules to align."
Now 16 years removed from the end of A Dozen Furies, vocalist Bucky Garrett and drummer Mike Miller are "back with [their] bullshit" in a new band called Beyond Sleep, a metalcore dream for fans of the duo's former project.
An eponymous three-track EP is available on Beyond Sleep's Bandcamp page, introducing Miller as the sole instrumentalist and Garrett's signature, Daryl Palumbo-inspired vocals on point as ever.
"After [A Dozen Furies] kind of disintegrated, a year or two later we all just decompressed a bit and tried to do some stuff, and I think we just jumped too far ahead and got a practice room, you know, did the whole thing like start over thing but kept the name. But we never really got traction," says Garrett. "I think we just needed a longer break, and then we all did our own things separately, and the timing of everything was kind of tough to get everyone on the same schedule. And then finally, it built up enough in me to where Mike had written a lot of stuff on guitar and had enough songs to where I was like, 'I like this. I like this. Let's piece this together.' And we finally got enough traction, just he and I, to make the three songs."
"Honestly, none of us really wanted to stop," says drummer Mike Miller." –Drummer Mike Miller
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While Beyond Sleep's three tracks — "Enemy Lines," "Pharmacy Ours" and "Your Weight in Gold" — are reminiscent of A Dozen Furies' brand of metallic angst, the EP reveals their maturity through the chaotic furor of metal and post-hardcore.
"We aren't trying to carbon copy the stuff that we did back then," Garrett says of the new songs, "because obviously, any genre, or any subgenre, has an expiration date as far as stylistically. But at the same time, we are who we are, right?"
Beyond Sleep's upcoming fourth song, which Garrett says has the working title "Gun Progress," is being written with A Dozen Furies guitarist Joey Turner and may end up being recorded as a proper reunion.
"It's just fun to have something to put out and work on, and I think that kind of lit a fire under some of the other guys' butts," says Miller. "We haven't talked about it a whole lot, but we toyed with the idea of getting the other guys involved and seeing if they want to call it ADF."
Miller says multiple songs have the potential to be future A Dozen Furies material, but it ultimately depends on his former bandmates. "If they don't want anything to do with it, that's totally fine," he says, "but we do have stuff a little closer to ADF that's in the works."
