Pierce the Veil

In the past few years, Equal Vision Records has signed some of the punk underground’s most groundbreaking acts including Circa Survive, Fear Before The March Of Flames and Chiodos. The latest edition to this elite group of artists is San Diego, California’s Pierce The Veil, a progressive post-rock quartet whose debut A Flair For The Dramatic incorporates elements of fractured hardcore, prog-rock and metalcore into a unique amalgam of heavy music that’s bound to turn heads and blow minds.

Born out of the visionary minds of two brothers, A Flair For The Dramatic seeks out something new with the intent to illuminate their eclectic influences. In order to do this, the Fuentes brothers locked down their home studio in San Diego and began writing the eleven distinctive and disparate tracks that would eventually encompass their full-length debut, A Flair For The Dramatic.

Recorded By Casey Bates (Portugal The Man, Gatsbys American Dream) in Seattle, Washington Pierce The Veil’s debut is a labor of love that the band put every ounce of creativity into. “We basically drove our RV up onto Casey’s front yard and stayed there for two months,” the band’s frontman Vic Fuentes explains with a laugh. “I’m the biggest perfectionist and I’ll do a part over and over a hundred times in the studio before it sounds right to me. I’m just glad that Casey was so patient with me,” he adds. “He brought our record somewhere that I never imagined it could go.”

It’s true. From the jaw-droppingly schizophrenic and striking opener “Chemical Kids And Mechanical Brides” to upbeat melodic rockers like “Drella” and acoustically tinged quasi-ballads like “Falling Asleep On A Stranger,” A Flair For The Dramatic incorporates nearly every style from the rock cannon without that sounding hackneyed or clichéd. This unique album is difficult to compare or reference to any other. Your best bet is to just let the music on A Flair For The Dramatic speak for itself.

“Lyrically, this was a very surprising record for me because I never thought I would write songs about relationships,” Vic explains when asked about the overall theme of the disc. “It just kind of so happened that I had a couple things happen recently relationship-wise that just came out in the writing—and I’m really glad it did because every word in every line feels like it has a lot deeper meaning,” he continues, citing his father as his musical teacher and biggest influence when writing the band's debut disc.

However despite Pierce The Veil’s technical complexity, their music doesn’t need to be overanalyzed or intellectualized, it simply needs to be listened to. And at the end of the day, the band—who recently got finished up a successful tour with Poison The Well and Portugal The Man—are content knowing that they made the best album that they possibly could. “When I sang the very last line we needed to record, in that moment I knew there was nothing else I could have done or put into this record,” Vic beams. “I knew we put in everything we had into it—and that was an amazing feeling.”

Hopefully, you’ll agree.

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