Providence, RI’s freshly-minted metallic hardcore powerhouse THE EMPIRE SHALL FALL first came into being in the summer of 2008, after longtime friends Nick Sollecito and Jesse Leach got together and decided it was high time for them to form a band. Though Leach had split with Killswitch Engage several years previously and Sollecito’s roots lay mainly in the jazz and hip hop scenes, they were dead-set on bringing a balls-out modern metal band to life. After finding a temporary drummer and recruiting Jake Davenport on guitar, and practicing endlessly to truly nail down the TESF sound, the quartet began playing gigs around New England. The addition of Marc de Lisle on second guitar and Jeff Pitts on drums solidified the band’s lineup, and led to the recording of the band’s debut full-length, Awaken. Financing the entire recording as well as all merchandise, pressing, and touring costs themselves and set to release the album on Sollecito’s own Angle Side Side Records in November 2009, The Empire Shall Fall are the perfect example of a determined, ambitious, totally DIY band on a mission.

The Empire Shall Fall’s eclectic sound is rooted in metal/hardcore, citing luminaries At the Gates, Meshuggah, and Edge of Sanity as major inspirations. However, ‘Awaken’ also draws heavily upon the band members’ combined interests in jazz, punk, and experimental music to create a compelling blend of melody, brutality, and sheer determination that is impossible to pin down and sure to intrigue fans of Refused, At the Drive In, Deftones, and BTBAM.

Fueled by political outrage and a never-ending search for truth, the band’s message is as potent as their music, and serves as a call to arms for a lost generation. Advocating positivity, unity, and empowerment and taking cues from legendary rabble-rousers and free thinkers like Jello Biafra, Benjamin Franklin, Cynthia McKinney, and Ron Paul, THE EMPIRE SHALL FALL’s passion for and dedication to their political causes forms the backbone of the band and sets them a head and shoulders apart from their peers.

Dave Witham (ex-Of the Hour, Flat-12) and drummer Derek Kerswill (Seemless, Unearth), have explored various permutations of prog-rock, metal and metalcore, but with their new band Tangents they've ventured far beyond their respective comfort zones and created an album full of melody, creativity and infinite beauty.

The band's debut full-length One Little Light Year is a teeming mass of delightful contradictions. It's poppy, but cerebral; musically complex, yet instantly engaging; ethereal but sturdy; psychedelic but organic; euphoric yet sedated; and elated, butinarguably melancholy. It's the kind of music that comes from passion, not research and it's the sound of 1,000 dark clouds passing overhead and creating the most astonishing patterns of awe-inspiring light. In short, One Little Light Year is the product of two minds vibing on previously unexplored musical planes.

"I left Of the Hour back in 2007. I had some songs written, but the band was beginning to disintegrate. I held onto them as I was very much in love with the ideas, but I wasn't sure when or who I would be able to bring them to life with," explains Witham. "They were more personal, so when I left the band I said, 'You know what? I'm gonna record an album just for me that reflected everything I love about music."

After tinkering around in his home studio, Witham assembled demos for "Blind Spots" and "The Pieces Fall," both of which appear on One Little Light Year and combine the singer/songwriter's love for the ebb-and-flow dynamics of Pre-Kid A Radiohead, the ethereal propulsion of Muse and the emotional revelations of Jeff Buckley. When he played the songs for friends, the reaction was unanimously positive, so Witham kept fine-tuning and writing new material. By early 2009 he had a bunch of songs/song ideas. "Some were very close to finished and some were just verse/chorus ideas done on acoustic that I couldn't really finish by myself.

With material in hand, Witham was keen to enter a studio to do more detailed tracking, but he didn't know what recording facility would best suit his needs. So he called up Kerswill, who once managed a band Witham played in, to ask his advice and then sent him his most recent demos.

"Derek asked 'who is going to drum on it,' and I said I was thinking of getting this guy, Alex, I used to play with," recalls Witham. "He said, 'No, no, no. I want to play on it."

"He sent me four songs and I really fell in love with them," Kerswill adds. "I was on tour with Unearth at the time, so I emailed him back and said, 'Dude, I'd really love to play drums on this stuff and I have a bunch of ideas for production. So can I maybe come down and get together with you?'"

With Kerswill onboard, Tangents wrote the title track "(Missing) One Little Light Year,' using parts Kerswill had originally intended for Seemless songs. Then, the two musicians collaborated on ideas to tweak and fine tune other songs on the album. As natural and intimate as "Arrow in the Heart," "Fall Asleep Again" and "When Will it End" sound, they were workshopped almost completely online.

"We did most of the work over the Internet," Witham says. "Derek came to my house a couple times, but we did almost everything individually and then emailed the parts back and forth. It wasn't really planned at all and it turned into something a little bit more magical than we had originally intended."

"I think it evolved into one of the best records I've ever done," Kerswill says. "It's definitely been the most enjoyable thing I've done in a long time. I have thoroughly enjoyed every moment we've worked on it."

One reason One Little Light Year shines so brightly is due to the uncanny chemistry between Witham and Kerswill. Even though they were divided by hundreds of miles when they worked on the songs, they were always on the same wavelength, as exemplified by "(Missing) One Little Light Year." "He gave me a guitar part he had and we just fed off each other, "Witham recalls. "We actually wrote it pretty much in one night."

"We never actually jammed together on any of the stuff when we were writing," Kerswill says. "We'd have basic structures for songs and then we'd program drums or find loops from a loop library to construct the songs."

The first time Witham and Kerswill actually got into a room together was in April 2009 when they finalized the arrangements and tracked drums. In order to minimize their time in the studio, Kerswill played with a click along to the demo tracks. Then, Witham returned home, stripped away everything but the drums and re-recorded the songs over the finished drum tracks. By early winter 2009, all of the recording was done and by March the album was fully mixed with co-producer Benjamin Jon (All That Remains, The Acacia Strain) and ready to be introduced to the public.

As soon as "The Pieces Fall" premiered on AOL Noisecreep, Tangents were showered with praise. While many listeners were surprised by Kerswill's rock drumming, most agreed it was a welcomed departure to hear him playing music that doesn't involve double-bass and blast beats.

"This is actually more my style of playing than anything else I do," Kerswill says. "The main challenge was some of the songs are very slow paced and playing slow with control is far harder than playing fast. But in truth, I don't listen to a lot of metal. I play it because I can, and I enjoy and love playing in Unearth, but this is exactly what I've wanted to do for a long time. This is pretty much a dream project."

Anyone who is familiar with Symmetry recognizes him not just as a good emcee, but as a talented singer who embeds a great amount of melody within each line of a song. Symmetry combines the soul of Old School R&B with the powerful force of early hip hop. Lyrically, Symmetry focuses on issues more common to the average listener, shying away from such themes as excess, sexism, and drugs. It has been said that Symmetry is "just honest hip hop."

In 2007, Symmetry released his sophomore album, "Dusty Pickup." The album was met with rave reviews by independent media and his peers. The release of the album helped identify Symmetry as a respectable artist in the hip hop community. Shortly after the release, Symmetry put together a live band to perform his songs. The band consists of some of Rhode Island's most unique and versatile players. With the band, Symmetry found a new energy and love for his music. The band helps bring the music to the masses and expand its audience beyond the hip hop community. Symmetry has said, "I'll never play with just turntables again if I have my way. The band breathes new life into the music."

In the almost 10 years Symmetry has been making a name for himself, he has extensively toured the United States, Canada, and Europe. Some of acts he and the group have shared the stage with include: Fabolous, Mims, Black Sheep, Akrobatik, Mr Lif, Apathy, Stress & Trauma, Curse, 7L & Esoteric, Mac Lethal, Blackalicious, Bus Drive, Grieves, Digable Planets, and Motion Man.