Volumes is Back with a New Album and a New Singer

When Myke Terry met Diego Farias and the rest of the metalcore band Volumes at an after party in LA, he didn’t really think it would lead to much of anything. For that matter, Terry doesn’t even remember having the conversation with the group’s founding guitarist about joining Volumes at all (whether or not alcohol had anything to do with that is up for debate). Yet here we are less than a year-and-a-half later and Terry is now one of the influential band’s two vocalists and responsible for the 8-year-old group’s latest musical undertaking.

“I thought [joining Volumes] was going to be really difficult, but we spent a lot of time together in the studio just laughing with each other and working and writing before we ever actually stepped onstage together,” Terry says. “I think the chemistry was there and made pretty apparent before we ever got onstage. I really don’t think we even skipped a beat. You mix that with a couple of good blunts, and everything just comes together.”

Despite the fact that Terry sees the entire situation as a “right place, right time” occurrence, it didn’t take long for the vocalist to not only fit into the band but also bring his own influences. Volumes has always been known to take their hard-rocking metalcore outside of the norm — often credited as being one of the main participants in the djent subgenre — so Terry wasn’t asked to mimic former vocalist Michael Barr when replacing him. His new bandmates just wanted him to bring his best day after day and put his own spin on both their new and existing tunes.

“I was excited, and it’s an incredible feeling to be able to have the opportunity to play with such talented musicians — especially musicians who challenge you to do more and embrace what you bring to the table,” Terry says. “That was a really cool thing that I wasn’t expecting. I thought maybe they’d try to put me in a box or get me to sound a certain way, but it was the opposite. They just wanted me to be myself.”

Terry’s influence can be heard all over Volumes’ third full-length album, Different Animals, which released today on Fearless Records. Although the record certainly keeps some of the more energetic metalcore sounds that fans expect from anything with their name attached to it, there’s no mistaking it for any of the earlier recordings. After working on it for nearly two years, the group’s follow-up to 2014’s No Sleep sounds like a whole new band.

“Being new and having that new dynamic, it’s still in the same vein stylistically but definitely touches on new things within that vein that we haven’t done before,” Terry says. “That’s the main difference from Via or No Sleep or even (2010’s initial EP) The Concept of Dreaming.”

More than anything, Terry sees the new album as an all-inclusive invitation for the band’s fans to have a good time and enjoy their music as an escape from the grind of daily life. Rather than trying to bring others down or attack anyone, Terry says Volumes — particularly in its latest incarnation — is all about spreading good vibes and good messages. After all, that’s what the band does and what Terry’s learned to do both with the new material and the songs that existed before he was a part of Volumes.

“It’s all new to me,” Terry says. “The old songs are new to me because I haven’t played them before, and the new songs are new because we haven’t played them together yet. I think it’s a learning experience on all sides, because none of them have ever played these songs with me. It’s cool for everyone because we get to start pretty much with a clean slate.”