IN THE EARLY 2000s, it seemed like every band had at least one massive, floor-filling anthem in them, and Soil were no exception. The Chicago five-piece might have been musically and visually out of step with prevailing nu metal trends, but their 2001 single Halo became as inescapable a rock club banger as Drowning Pool’s Bodies or Alien Ant Farm’s cover of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal.
“When we wrote Halo, we never expected it to do as well as it did,” admits bassist and founding member Tim King. “But people went apeshit.”
Soil started as a side-project of Oppressor, a death metal band formed by Tim and guitarist Adam Zadel in the early 90s. They’d seen the underground metal scene changing, and they weren’t keen on where it was heading.
“The Norwegian [black metal] scene became super-popular and guys were covering their faces in corpsepaint and singing about Satan,” Tim recalls. “We weren’t into that Satanic stuff
