Vaux – Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice

  • Bobby Gorman posted
  • Reviews

Vaux

Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice - Outlook Music

I had heard good things about Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice. People were calling it the band’s opus, their breakout release, and were flogging it with praise despite the fact that the label desperately wanted to delay the release and then eventually dropped the band from the roster. Eventually, the band found a new label with Outlook and their “opus” finally secured a release date and voila, here we are with Vaux‘s brand new album – an album with a lot of hype, but still held no high hopes or expectations for me. Once I heard the album though, I was surprised; although, still not impressed.

Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice is infinitely better than I thought it was going to be, but has still failed to really inspire me in any way,shape or form. The album kicks off with Identity Theft, a relatively good song that caught my attention right off the back thanks to its choppy guitar work and sporadic screams ala Locust. But that soon faded as the song continued on, it’s not that it’s bad, in fact, it’s a good song but it’s just too long without enough of an emotional push to really propel the song forward. Sadly, that tends to be the trend for the entire album. They are good songs, but rarely do they keep your interest for the whole four minutes – which seriously hurts the enjoyment factor of the album.

Most of this album is extremely experimental, from heavily distorted vocal shouts to the triple-threat guitar attack, Vaux have experimented and pushed their musical boundaries further than ever here. Songs that remind you of a mix between Coldplay and Thursday tinged with some hardcore elements to wake up the listener from their sleepless stroll; making it so that while the whole album is distinctively Vaux, there’s still enough uniqueness amongst the songs to make them survive by themselves. Going from the panic of Cocaine James to the slow moving, piano-driven The Last Report From…, you’re able to see many sides of the band. However, there is one constant throughout the whole album that stays steady, and that’s the fact that the highlights of the album always come from the chants and gang vocals, the parts that actually get the listener involved and interested in the album instead of just letting it past by.

Fans of Thursday and older Vaux material will love Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice, and while I’m not sure that it deserves quite as much hype as it’s been getting, it is pretty good. Just not my style, and can be way too laid back at times. Basically, it’s good background music.