Of Mice & Men: Still Unbreakable

When OF MICE & MEN‘s Restoring Force landed at number four on the Billboard 200 seven years ago, the band looked nailed on to set up camp in starlight. But the classic, cut throat fashion of the music industry would soon rear its head – two years later they were without both a frontman, and a cohesive forward strategy. The wheels of social media kicked into overdrive while the band, mostly, stayed silent.

According to now sole vocalist/bassist Aaron Pauley, that’s mainly because the band themselves weren’t sure what was next. A story intimately captured in the quartets 2017 documentary Unbreakable, a rehearsal session in the back streets of London would answer all their questions. “Even when there was no clear path of the future, we just got together to jam,” says Aaron. “We started playing some of the old songs, we had a PA wired and turned on, and we all kinda looked at each other like: oh, okay, yeah – let’s carry on. And then pretty much immediately we started writing songs for Defy.”

Time has gone on to show that, more so than their mainstream success – that moment of recapturing their spark has been the most pivotal of the band’s career. 2021 sees the band on a new label, and attacking a fresh means to release their music to the masses. Despite OF MICE & MEN‘s radio silence at the time, Aaron insists they were never going to allow the events of 2016 to dissipate them.

“It’s funny when I think about it because in their [the fans] minds there’s this big meeting where we’re trying to figure it out. In reality, that never happened. We all knew that we were gonna keep going,” he claims. “I think Las Rageous was our first show as a four piece, in like Spring time. I don’t know if we even said anything until we just played the show, and there was a bunch of YouTube videos and blogs talking about it. And then I think after the day we played LR we dropped the Unbreakable music video.”

Though the four piece already knew the future was safe – Unbreakable‘s classic OF MICE & MEN metalcore swing reaffirmed the lust of the fan base. And once the subsequent Defy hit shelves, the bad taste left in your mouth from its predecessor Cold World was washed away. Since then, OF MICE & MEN‘s feet have rarely left the accelerator. Just one year after their debut record as a four piece, the Californian’s uncovered chapter two of this new tale: EARTHANDSKY.

An album that exists purely because the band insist on writing whenever possible – the circumstantial existence of EARTHANDSKY rubber stamped the creative hot spot they found themselves in. “We write all the time. Some touring had been cancelled, and we had a little gap of availability, and it was either: take four/five weeks off, or write. And we were like hey, we have a fair bit of material, can we just start a new album? And they [Rise Records] were like, if you’re ready: cool.”

Fighting for chart pole positions they might not be, but there’s seldom been a time where the band have felt more invigorated. Now signed to the ever growing SharpTone Records – OF MICE & MEN headline a roster of artists where potential is often bubbling over the edge of the cooking pot. “It’s really cool to be on a label that is perceived by the fan base as the future, because we’re gonna be here for a while,” asserts Aaron.

That wasn’t the only reason SharpTone were cherry picked as the band’s new label, though. This years Timeless EP is the first of three that we can expect in 2021. OF MICE & MEN looked to break free from the shackles of album based writing – they found the perfect fit. “We wanted to do something a little bit different,” he explains “Without this delay of ‘Oh, we’ve got to write an album’s worth of material’ then we’ve got to wait and market the entire thing. It takes a lot longer between the creation and sharing it, we wanted to minimise that time, and SharpTone were really on board with that.”

Aaron likens their current strategy to that of the Soundcloud rap generation. Where the artist to consumer journey is instantaneous, and for too long – alternative music has meandered in the background. “Those artist’s libraries are massive, because they can just finish a song and release it.” He takes a second to gather his thoughts before continuing. “Historically you’ve had to go to a studio, set up, tune up, track for eight hours then align them. I think it’s [recording an album] much more of a process. In a way it’s like comparing apples to oranges, but in terms of the method for release: we’ve created it, we want you to enjoy it without this massive lag time – it’s more of an exciting way to release music.”

Mixed by Aaron, and produced over Zoom calls – the trio of EPs we’re set to receive this year couldn’t come from a band that weren’t battle hardened. And though in Timeless, we found three tracks that very much stuck to the OF MICE & MEN structure – Pauley confirmed that each release will depict its own story.

“That in and of itself is the beauty of releasing music in a shorter format these days,” he quips. “When everything is digital I don’t understand the difference between: releasing five singles and then dropping the rest of the album, vs writing three songs, finishing them, releasing them. Oh, we’ve finished three more? Drop em. You know what I mean?”

Four years after a camera captures the moment they decided to continue as a quartet: the bond holding OF MICE & MEN together has never been more impenetrable. Now armed with a zest for pushing the boundaries of the fan consumption experience, as well as their classic nous for writing metalcore bangers: it’s no surprise the band don’t want to go anywhere – they’ve never been needed more.

Timeless is out now via SharpTone Records.

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