Vexes - Adventurous New Band Appeals to Metal, Rock Fans

It’s always great to discover fresh, adventurous new bands whose unique sound appeals to a variety of listeners. Vexes are one of those bands. The Monmouth and Ocean County based group just released its debut album, “Ancient Geometry,” and it’s a stellar effort.

Vexes’ songs combine hard-driving prog-metal with big, melodic choruses, such as on “Helion” and “Lift.” You could easily see the band being played on metal radio as well as alternative rock stations. Additional highlights on “Ancient Geometry” include “Terra” and “Photochrom,” which pack in several soundscapes that take the listener on an engaging musical ride.

Vexes consists of singer-guitarist-keyboardist Charlie Berezansky, guitarist-keyboardist John Klagholz, bassist Bobby Carpenter and drummer Justin Graves. Berezansky and Klagholz previously made their name with more mainstream rockers Vessl, while Carpenter and Graves come by way of metalcore/prog-metalers A Life Once Lost.

We recently spoke to Justin Graves.

How did you come to join Vexes?

Our bass player Bob Carpenter and I were in a band together called A Life Once Lost. We had something new we were working on with some friends and we were looking for a vocalist and I had been posting around on Facebook to see if anyone could recommend someone. Charlie reached out to me. We were sending stuff back and forth and he was sending me some early Vexes demos.

I really liked what they were doing. It was awesome, sounded great and I wanted to be a part of it. I ended up jamming with them for a while and we finished the record. The Vexes stuff is heavy, melodic and dissonant. It reeled me in, how well Charlie could sing, how good the songs are.

The music is progressive but also accessible to the more mainstream metal or rock fan

That’s what I like about it. It’s got something for all fans of heavy music or rock music even. It’s something an open-minded metalhead could get into but at the same time someone who listens to rock could appreciate as well. And that’s good. We want to be able to get our stuff in front of all those fans and at the same time bounce around between different heavy music audiences and please them in different ways. We’ve got melodic vocals, heavy pounding riffs, everything.

You want to be able to bob your head to it and groove to it but at the same time we don’t want to sound cookie cutter. We try to keep it off the beaten path from what an average band is going to sound like. We try to step up the writing a little bit, a little bit more of a progressive feel. But not that far down that rabbit hole that we’re not going to be able to please that mainstream audience that might not get that if you go too far into it.

In this day and age how do you draw attention to a new band?

Social media is key. It’s really interesting. Even toward the tail end of A Life Once Lost, it was 2011 or 2012 and Facebook wasn't really used as a business tool yet for bands. During our peak it was still purely Myspace, which wasn’t even close to the animal that social media is today for pushing bands. We’re getting everything up and running ourselves for the most part and learning all the tricks of social media. It’s been a fun, challenging adventure so far as learning how to get fans that way.

What’s next for Vexes?

We’re definitely itching to play and just hope to get out there and push the band, push the record and see what opportunities come. We’re hoping that interest from all areas comes, whether it be labels or booking agents. We’ve got a lot of great feedback already. We’ve got SiriusXM Liquid Metal and Music Choice already going for us. We also shot a music video at the art factory in Paterson for “Decisions Are Death Here.” It’s been a great start so it should be pretty fun.

Vexes on the web:

https://www.facebook.com/weare...

http://www.vexes.bigcartel.com...

Twitter: @wearevexes

Email: vexesnj@gmail.com