Welcome to the Boolin Tunes Staff Spotlight, a special segment on the site in which we dive deep into a classic or simply personally beloved album to shine a light on releases that we feel deserve a second glance.
Shortly after his infamous pitstop with Of Mice & Men, vocalist Jerry Roush teased a new band. He confirmed longtime associates Travis Sykes and Chad Hasty early on as bassist and drummer respectively, but kept tight-lipped as to who would man guitar. Given his background with Sky Eats Airplane and OM&M, one likely expected a rather standard-fare guitar player to join the fray.
However, Roush eventually announced that Josh Travis, alumnus of The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, would fill the spot. A left-field pick, needless to say, and how Travis would utilize his eight-string guitar experience remained unknown.
The result ended up as a genius incorporation of Travis’s skills, injected into a more mainstream metalcore package on 2012’s The Royal Thousand:
“I am a starving man who does impossible things,
And you can’t see fire if you’re standing in flames,
Just raise the white flag.”
From the jump, their first single “White Flag” sets out to crush any doubt about the lineup. Not only does Roush hold his own as front man, but he’s able to keep up overtop of Travis‘s manic riffing. His clean vocals are surprisingly strong, and are well-juxtaposed against the chaos of the backdrop. Nonetheless, the aggression propels the whole thing forward without needing to overcompensate. Tracks like “If He Dies, He Dies” and “All Along” prove that this single’s success did not simply capture lightning in a bottle. Instead, the album continues to deliver highlight after highlight.
“Those dirty red inflections
Are just burned into my brain
Those taunts from lesser loves
I push them all away”
Even so, track seven, “She Is Well and Nothing Can Be Ill” anchors the back half of the album and may be the overall highlight. Roush delivers an incredibly strong performance, with the first verse providing some of the loveliest sounds on the album. Travis, of course, is unable to bring anything but his A-game, and that remains true here. The riff dances at light speed as the rhythm section works to keep pace. The tradeoff of the sing-scream chorus is nothing short of icing on this cake, which, from experience, also makes for an incredible live number. Then, down The Royal Thousand‘s stretch, penultimate track “Memorandum” especially establishes itself as a contender before giving way to the closer:
“It gets to be just like a day on avalanche
These words are a slow romance
I don’t believe you would say
Anything to lead me astray”
The Royal Thousand naturally ends on another peak with “From May To Now”. The track title was originally the planned album title, which Sykes describes as “that anxious feeling of wanting to get out there and see what we can make of ourselves” with the album and band overall. That feeling explains much of the album’s themes, where the work’s creation informs the work itself. That motif then piggybacks off of the other theme, the few or the “Thousand” in this case. All told, it serves as an excellent closer to an album filled with memorable moments and standout tracks.
Unfortunately, Glass Cloud‘s next release, the nine-string thruther EP Perfect War Forever in 2013 was their last. Since then, Josh Travis joined Emmure, where his talents haven’t been used to their full potential. Both Sykes and Hasty joined Glassjaw, of which Hasty is still a member. Jerry Roush, on the other hand, hasn’t been active in music since, and essentially has vanished from the scene. It’s an undignified end to a band that clearly possessed incredible talent and direction, but thankfully, they left us with The Royal Thousand to listen to into oblivion. Josh Travis has posted enough Glass Cloud teasers on social media over the past few years to give us enough to chew on for that long, anyway.
Otherwise, I advise you keep it here at Boolin Tunes for more music news, reviews, and a fresh spotlight next week.