Along Came A Spider

By Gennifer Harding-Gosnell: If you ever need proof of what big softies most headbangin’ metal guys really are, listen to the boys of Cleveland band Along Came A Spider when they talk about their girl, Lola.

Lola became the sixth member of ACAS by default when the guys found her emaciated and shivering on the side of a Texas highway whilst out on tour last year. They went from town to town looking for a vet or a no-kill shelter and eventually found help in Waco where Lola was nursed back to health. A high school friend of ACAS bassist John Calo adopted Lola. She’s living happily ever after in Indiana and occasionally still gets to see the men who rescued her when they tour through the Midwest. A video the band made telling Lola’s story has been viewed on YouTube and Facebook nearly a million times.

“It’s the album we’ve been waiting our career to make.”
When not busy rescuing dogs or uploading their genuinely hilarious shenanigans to YouTube, Along Came A Spider is pushing the boundaries of post-hardcore music. A new album, to be released later this year, will see the band take a new direction in sound, style, and scope.

“We recorded each song individually as opposed to doing it all in one big month-long recording session,” Calo says. “We actually took a full year to make the record. [That process] focused all our efforts on each song individually, keeping each one within the theme and the mood that we were going for. It’s given us a much more focused album. It’s our most mature album.”

Part of that maturity and the album’s new sound came from working with producer Evan McKeever (Nine Shrines, Downplay). “He helped us get the sound we were looking for,” Calo says. “We wrote a very big rock record, there’s no screaming. Jamie [Miller, vocalist] has always been a great vocalist, but our producer really channeled a whole different person out of him. On some of the songs, there’s three different types of vocals, all Jamie.”

The band is currently in the middle of changing labels. Contract negotiations and settlements will need to be reached before ACAS can determine a release date for the new album, though it is, without question, completed.

Changes in a band’s sound and musical direction can create rifts with fans, but ACAS is not particularly worried. “Obviously some fans are gonna pigeon-hole us and say, ‘Oh, they’re not metalcore any more. They’re not for us anymore,’ and that’s fine,” Calo says. “This album is a new direction, but it goes back to where we started as musicians, the Chevelle/Breaking Benjamin/Slipknot-era stuff plays a big influence on our new record. It’s the album we’ve been waiting our career to make. We left our previous label in hopes of going toward a different market. They’re gonna hear musical maturity. In the three years since our last record dropped, we’ve learned a lot as musicians from touring and being around different artists that are at that next level. This album is our best foot forward as far as reaching into that next level of the music industry. Fans are going to hear an honest album from us.”

“Fans are going to hear an honest album from us.”
ACAS’s gig at the Foundry opening for The Devil Wears Prada on Tuesday, March 28, was the stage debut for four of the band’s new songs. The opening track, “American Beauty”, is a ball-buster, bouncing between melody and metal, to the delight of the sold-out crowd. ACAS rolled through three more new tracks and finished their set with the anthemic “Dreamers” and an older fan favourite, “Inside The Kill Room”, both of which prompted singalongs from the eager fans at stage front. The guys all look and act like seasoned performers, like they’ve done this before, but with the vitality and confidence of a band more certain of who it is and where it’s going that trusts its fan base will have matured along with them. - PressureLife Magazine

By Jeff Neisel: The guys in the Cleveland hard rock group Along Came a Spider were driving through Texas recently when they noticed some asshole had left a lovable black and white dog on the road to die. They took pity on the poor creature and adopted it, taking it into their RV and nursing it back to life even though many of the animal hospitals they visited wanted to euthanize the little guy. The band eventually even found a good home for the dog too. The group documents the heartwarming story on its Facebook in the video you can watch below. - SCENE Magazine

"One to watch" "'Wanderlust has some great songwriting dynamics and 'A Siren's Call' features some cool guitar heroics" - Greg Pratt, Alternative Press - Alternative Press

By Sharan Paul

Six men with a common vision and a penchant for metalcore make Along Came a Spider a staple on the tour circuit. Jamie Miller (lead vocals), Justin Sobota (guitar/vocals), Luke Fockler (lead guitar), John Calo (bass), Tony Castillo (drums), and Joel Sedlak (keyboards) form a post-hardcore metal orchestra that delights audiences with their enthusiasm, positivity, and solid musicianship. Known for their exceptional guitar riffs and rhythms, hard-driving bass, aggressive drum fills, and ingenious keyboards, Along Came a Spider blends elements from all genres to produce an authentic sound in their music. Miller’s commanding vocals stand out in the contrast they provide. The clean vocals are impeccable. Still, it is the unclean vocals that are so arresting, in that they transform to a style of spoken word that adds drama and intensity to each song.

Along Came a Spider is a group of serious musicians who know that levity is necessary to success. Their web series, “Home Movies from the Road” not only shows the fun and frivolous side to music, it is an uncensored glimpse at life on the road. Featuring clips of their live performances and bands they have toured with, the videos are at once entertaining and meaningful. From skateboarding to Frisbee to brushing your teeth at Walmart, the artists embrace touring with enthusiasm. They sing while refilling at the gas station. They play keyboards on the back of a seat. Music surrounds them and that is just how they want it. New challenges are present around every corner and Along Came a Spider uses each one to maintain their passion and dedication.

Along Came a Spider exploded on the Agora Theatre stage like an atom bomb. In a fusion of pure force, the sound immediately captivated the audience, and the jumping did not stop till the end of their set. It is impossible not to have fun, because the musicians unmistakably enjoy each moment with you. They cherish the participation of the crowd when fans crowd surf, mosh, and stage dive, and feel it drives the energy levels to the top of the scale. When their show was cut short due to time constraints, the audience responded by immediately demanding more.

It is no surprise that Along Came a Spider is working on a new album before hitting the road to tour next year. Until then, I will continue to listen to Resurgence, because it surrounds me with music each time it plays. - Mind Equals Blown

By Zachary Houle 11 September 2014

As far as metal (and sometimes thrash) goes, this is near the top of the pack. This is a highly varnished album.

With vaguely Christian themes, but not overtly so, Resurgence simply just rocks out in the way that a good metal album should. It’s glossy and slick, but there are a bevy of nice touches, such as the remotely classical-in-nature opening title track, and “A Link to the Past” opens with an eight-bit keyboard riff that makes it sound like the score for a video game. And there’s some great vocal interplay: there are emo-ish vocals, but every now and then there’s some guttural scream-o singing. Just about everything here is fired up and that makes it a compelling and well built album worth your time and money. There are no obvious highlights – as much as I love “A Link to the Past” – and the record works as a cohesive whole. It’s quite astounding, actually, given its top-notch production on what is essentially an indie label.

To give you a sense of just how incredibly solid this disc is, consider that a choir is utilized on “All Gods”, which shows the group basically pulling off all the stops. And for those looking for crushing guitar riffs interspersed with some solo noodling, you’ll find a lot to love here. Basically, Resurgence is entertainment, and highly enjoyable stuff at that. I hear nods to past metal bands here and there, such as the thudding guitar riff on “All Gods” that reminds me a lot of Prong (and Prong should get a lot more love than they did). Granted, your love of this LP will hinge on how varnished you love your metal – those who come looking for feedback and distortion are going to be hugely disappointed. And, yes, there’s even a reference to Game of Thrones, which makes this the third album I’ve reviewed in the past year that does so. Still, Resurgence is highly commendable and those looking for great production techniques in their hard rock and metal are going to gobble this up. - Pop Matters

By D.M on August 20th, 2014

Strap in. Along Came a Spider’s new record “Resurgence” is a twisting ride. Dive in when you’re ready.

Let’s rave over this record for a moment. The music for most of “Resurgence” is wonderful in every meaning of the word. One small knock to get out of the way – the record is a handful of cuts too long; the band runs out of tricks by the end and starts to loop back on themselves. Moving on. Along Came a Spider has composed an album of musical concepts that deserve heavy accolades. The music is varied and pronounced, powerful without being overbearing. It understands pacing, personality, phrasing and the use of open space. “Resurgence” never pigeonholes, always expressing versatility as well as creativity and innovation. It incorporates elements of metal, hardcore and rock, sewing in seeds like piano lines, gang choruses, twin guitar harmony, electronic overlays, power chords, anything and everything. Often on this site, we lament a band’s single mindedness, saying ‘wouldn’t it have been nice if they’d pushed the envelope a little?’ Well, Along Came a Spider did, writing riffs that are hooky and accessible while turned to eleven.

The vacillation between hook and pulverization in “Wanderlust” demonstrates an elevated level of understanding in songwriting, as the song lays a solid bass foundation and then stacks up a thrash style riff on top of it for the bridge and chorus. Alternatively, that same bass is placed against and airy piano soliloquy for “A Siren’s Call,” that mix being immediately followed by a melodic guitar harmony. That kind of skillful balance is hard to find, and is dotted through time and again during the experience of “Resurgence.” “In Oblivion” takes the concepts from both of those songs and mashes them into one even larger experience. The composition here is top notch, and hell, even the lyrics are passably intelligent.

This is an album you need to hear. Do yourself a favor and pick it up now before the entire world finds out who these guys are. - Bloody Good Horror

By Austin Condict | Jun. 30, 2014

ACAS’s most mature and progressive album to date, Resurgence, will hit shelves this Fall, and trust the word of a music nerd, it won’t disappoint. Fans of bands like Memphis May Fire, We Came As Romans, Born Of Osiris, and Silverstein will be able to appreciate the uplifting, soul-thrashing, post-hardcore feel of this Standby Records trophy. After multiple sessions of putting the third album under a microscope (using my Dark Side Of The Moon method: blinds closed, eyes closed, headphones loud), I was seriously impressed by how quickly the underlying depth and obvious effort surfaced like a crowd-surfing mosher.

Having shared the stage with heavyweights in the scene like Asking Alexandria, Suicide Silence, Oceano, The Devil Wears Prada, and Black Veil Brides (another creative force birthed by Standby Records), Along Came A Spider has already acquired an active fanbase. Their upcoming sophomore LP, however, displays an evident growth within the band, both through lyrical content and radically dynamic styles employed over 15 tracks of Resurgence. There is no doubt in my mind that this is an active strategy to appeal to a broader demographic of listeners, and it will work.

The most memorable albums are those that can speak directly to the listener, using themes the audience will be able to relate with. For me, Resurgence is one of those albums to be thankful for. Along Came A Spider’s second full-length release delivers an inspiring message for their fans (called “Arachnids”) regarding change and mending the pieces of shattered lives. These guys are certainly an accelerating force to be reckoned with, as well as a refreshing bridge uniting different styles and tastes. Follow them on Youtube, Facebook and Twitter, and don’t miss out on the Resurgence this Fall! - Good Night Magazine

By Holly Reijs

Cleveland's Along Came A Spider are back with their second full length album "Resurgence". This album follows up their 2012 LP "If We Were Normal Men" which the band went relentlessly on tour for, where they appeared at many festivals. Resurgence is an album about hope and revitalization adapted for the listener.

The track "A Link To The Past" starts up with an electronic feel to it, making you wonder what the whole album is going to sound like. Lead vocalist Jamie Miller showed his full potential in this song, with the whole album in fact. It's clear and mesmerizing. The Paramore cover "CrushCrushCrush" stands out because of the right amount of screaming mixed in with the clean vocals. "Would You Kindly" is a track that starts off slow and peaceful and then kicks in to hardcore, making you jump and smile at the same time. The lyrics are down-to-earth and they really make you listen to every word.

Within the melodic metalcore comminuty, this album has made a huge statement. It's a powerful album that you have to listen to over and over again. Along Came A Spider is definitely a band to watch this year; big things are going to land in their laps! - RPM Magazine