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.
“Fear me!” I say as I stare into his eyes.
So begins the album More Than Mythology by post-hardcore band New Vegas. Based out of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the band released the album in 2013 as a follow up to their debut EP Overseer the year before. Blending a heavier style with progressive leanings, the self-released LP manages to impress from the very start.
Oh, his shadow haunts my dreams, and her face lurks in my thoughts.
He plucked her from the earth as a rabbit steals the farmer’s crop.
And then that rabbit ran, and then that rodent hid,
But no matter how hard I try my mind could never be rid of him.
Opener “Ensnared” previews the kinds of buildup the band does well, with a drawn out intro to beckon the listener closer. The vocals don’t start for more than 90 seconds, but once they do, Jon Coulter‘s disarming style bursts into focus. Handling both cleans and uncleans, the frontman’s style melds effectively with Jimmy Howell‘s wandering arpeggios and riffs. Despite the average track length clocking in north of five minutes, the album slips by rather quickly, a testament to its multifarious nature.
Falling to fight, my flight stifled by your need to take another life.
One last attack and I can only hope that we both will die
Arguably, Coulter‘s most impressive performance comes at the midpoint of the album with “Les Enfants Terribles”. The track starts with quiet guitar work below a stellar vocal introduction, a near monologue which breaks into an incredible riff. The lyrics to the intro, in full, are as follows:
Oh, brother, can you believe what we’ve done?
Gripped the life from the thousand dog tags we’ve won.
No, brother, you can’t blame who we’ve become.
We were made to be their pawns,
With our hands red as a fox,
Our stealth is equally sly.
And in one final move I close in and whisper,
“Oh please, fox die!”
The animal-based imagery within the lyricism serves to further storytelling and motifs present throughout the album. The song is no slouch as it progresses either, finally culminating in a start-stop breakdown which segues into the album’s lead single:
Tell me this is more than you can bear,
Can you feel your feet dragging through the earth?
You can yell and mock and curse the air,
But your cries can never change the struggles you’ve endured.
“Atlas” won a fair share of local radio play upon release as a slightly easier to digest version of the band’s sound. Nonetheless, the track retains that shift-in-a-snap sound they’ve developed thus far, moving through dynamic passages with ease. Such is the case through the rest of the album as well, closing strongly with “The Winter Soulstice”.
Unfortunately, More Than Mythology would be the last album of this style that the band released. Coulter, needing to relocate for work, left the band after one final show on The Chariot‘s farewell tour later in 2013. Bassist Ethan Conner departed shortly thereafter as well. New Vegas subsequently went down a more hardcore-influenced path with new vocalist Tyler Cramer, while guitarist Jimmy Howell eventually formed the band 156/Silence, who have recently signed to Sharptone Records and have a new EP available for preorder.
For those in the know, however, all subsequent releases are forever chasing the heights found on More Than Mythology.
Otherwise, we hope you keep it here for more music news, reviews, and a fresh spotlight next week.