Of Mice and Men - Defy

Defy comes at the head of a very unfortunate loss of the band’s vocalist, Austin Carlille, to early retirement at the foreseeable behest of his Marfan syndrome’s enumerating complications (no surprise given his towering, lanky figure). Stepping up to the rough vocal plate, bassist Aaron Pauley competently handles the new responsibility of an extra few vocal techniques, a task less daunting than a lot of fans are making it out to be when realizing how many vocalists have been doing it for most of, if not their whole, career (Matt Heafy, Robb Flynn, Mikael Akerfeldt, Howard Jones, Jesse Leach, most metalcore-centric vocalists from the 2000’s).

All things considered, it’s more of an emotional tumult, losing a bandmate and a friend, than a technical one, and the tone of the album certainly expresses it. Defy plays as a record against sizeable odds, courageous and uplifting. It’s an album more concerned with letting out a lot of positive emotion than with doing it with highly thought-out originality, which comes with its pros and cons. I can certainly commend the band for their chin-up perseverance in such a time as theirs, and the positive, fight-back energy throughout the project is something I actually found to be a breath of fresh air among all the nihilistic black metal and gory death metal I’ve been listening to and that straight up shit album from Black Veil Brides I had to sit through (happy thoughts, think happy thoughts now). I could totally see myself getting way more into this if it came out in the mid-2000’s when I was starting to get into metal. It reminds me so vividly of the vast sea of nu metal influenced Christian metalcore that surged up with the new wave of American heavy metal.

Then again, I think in my younger days I would probably have found certain flaws to be much more glaring and deal-breaking (particularly the semi-pop-punk vocal melodies). Even in the space it occupies, Defy still doesn’t execute as well as it could or as well as other albums in the same space do. The formulaic writing kind of comes with the territory, but it’s quite accentuated on this album with the lack of unique musical moments and the genericity of most songs on the album, ballads especially.

The album has a few highlights; the heavy metalcore thrasher “Warzone”, despite its unamazing lyric, is notable for its increased intensity, and the reworking of Pink Floyd’s “Money” actually flowed and fit into the band’s style better than I would have expected.

Of Mice and Men have certainly made it through this storm of their career with their ship still in one piece, but not without some damage to the hull and the masts. Their sense of steadfastness, though has probably propelled them even higher though, and I imagine the admiration by their fans has only grown. I only wonder how long they’ll be able to find success with this very old sound after they’re seen as having finished weathering this storm. If what tenacity and resolve they put forth on this album is indeed a genuine representation of them as a band, I imagine they won’t let complacency alone push them into oblivion.