With music being more accessible in the modern age than ever before and the number of new bands and music being consumed at a rapid rate the propensity for similar sounding bands is increasingly becoming an accepted by-product of mass consumption.
But every so often a band appears on the scene with a big fuck you to the system. A band that not only blurs the lines of acceptance but moves them a considerable distance in the process.
Often these bands have a preconceived notion that difference equates to success and venture down this musical path with a set finish line in their personal sights, but such bands more often than not get caught up in their own self importance and fumble their way through an album or two before losing themselves completely in a myriad of musical mazes from which there is no escape.
And then there are the bands who don’t really care if their eccentricities equate to album sales or popularity. Bands that just want to follow their own path free from restraints and expectations, and when that band comes along it makes all of the shit you put your ears through over countless next best things worth every second of investment.
That band of the modern generation is I Prevail.
In less than ten years the Michigan rock/hard rock/metal/alternative/punk… the list of genres could take up a large portion of this text, but you get the picture – have managed to not just flip the music industry on its head, but more so defined a new new generation of music lovers for which the only rule is why the fuck do you need rules?
Their first two albums, Lifelines and Trauma saw the band take massive leaps forward in a world too often socially constricted, allowing the music to truly breathe a life of its own and travel in whichever direction it chose to follow at that time.
Their music is a sonic explosion of grandeur, somehow managing to be inwardly cohesive while raging in uncontrolled schizophrenia on the surface.
The main question surrounding the bands newest album True Power in the lead up to its August 19 release was just how far I Prevail would go this time but as soon as the collection of songs was unleashed on the world that question quickly answered itself. But in case you haven’t taken that journey yourself yet I will let you in on a little secret.
Far. Incredibly far. And in the process, I Prevail have created possibly the most eclectically beautiful album to stain these ears in over four decades of service to metal.
HEAVY caught up with vocalist Eric Vanlerberghe shortly after True Power dropped to get his thoughts on the album.
"Coming out of Trauma, the last record, we really prided ourselves on what we did with that record, pushing the boundaries and blurring the lines between as many genres that we enjoyed growing up listening to from metal to hip hop to nu metal... just rock in general has a lot of different lanes to be in and we really tried to push Trauma in that direction,” he explained. “After being received the way it was, we were like, well, let's see how much further we can push it. Being able to take two years to just tweak and work on this and give it it's due process we couldn't be more proud of what we accomplished in trying to blur lines of genres."
One of the only problems with having such diverse sonic structures on an album is choosing singles that best represent the complete body of work, a problem exacerbated greatly when some songs on the album span across more genres than there are days in a week. I Prevail chose to release Body Bag, Bad Things and Self-Destruction, and although Vanlerberghe says that those three provide glimpses into the musical disparity contained with the album there is much more mystery to unravel when presented with True Power as a whole.
"That's tough because there are some songs that kind of live outside of that little trifecta there,” he measured, “but for the most part I would say that is a core representation - a good representation of what we've tried to do on this record."
In the full interview, Eric talks more about the songs on True Power, finding the balance between so many different influences and where to find the equilibrium, the new phase of I Prevail entered into with this album, constructing music for themselves first and foremost, finding acceptance musically and more.