SPILL FEATURE: THE ART OF BREAKING OPEN – A CONVERSATION WITH SHANE LYONS OF VARIALS

THE ART OF BREAKING OPEN

A CONVERSATION WITH SHANE LYONS OF VARIALS

Stepping into the new chapter of Varials’ new album, there is a sort of unspoken heaviness and no-nonsense grit that adorns the walls of Where The Light Leaves. It steps into a kind of weight that not only forces the band to confront the new challenges that have arisen with a new vocalist, but also forces them to confront who they are, what they have survived, and the risks they face as they become who they will become. For Shane Lyons, Where The Light Leaves is a forked road journey, each leading to different paths of reckoning, recalibration, and reclamation. While a new vocalist has bred its own unique challenges, it has also created an opportunity to create a new soundscape and future for the band, one that is heavier and more aggressive than ever expressed on previous albums.

“With Skyler [Conder], it’s, it’s a whole new thing for us. Now, the identity for Varials, I think, has just been, you know, no nonsense, really, with some extra stuff kind of sprinkled in there, just because we like to experiment,” expresses Lyons. “And it’s kind of getting back to that. Just reimagining ourselves. It’s kind of dumbing it down and just going back to basics, really. Sky has been great. It is kind of like a whole new beast, really, and we’re kind of navigating that. But the first order of business is writing, you know, the best record we could possibly write. I think we did that.”

While their last release bore its chaos outward, Where The Light Leaves finds itself colored in a different hue of inward aggression: snarling, teeth-baring, and filled with frustration and volatility. Aggression still drenches the very fabric of their new release; however, homing in on these surface-level ornamentations is no longer the point. Instead, it fuels Where The Light Leaves into something more vulnerable, soul-searching, and human. If this album has proven anything, it’s that Varials have stopped being the band that was running from the shadows of creative intrigue and instead has allowed themselves to sit in it, study it, and speak through this lens of relative quiet fury for three years.

PURCHASE WHERE THE LIGHT LEAVES

“With our last record, we tried some things that, you know, were a little bit too far from what we had started with. The band’s trajectory kind of took a left turn there. Different people were writing the music. We had another, you know, a former member,” Lyons expresses. “So, it was nice to be able to kind of, like, shift back to what we do best, while also keeping the best parts of the melodic stuff. I mean, there are parts on the records where, you know, it’s not just heavy 100% of the time. We’ll have something to show for the people who maybe did enjoy that melodic side. So, it’s been a good blend of everything, but for the most part, it’s kind of like pedal to the metal. Heavy has always been us, it’s what we are good at.”

Within the weather system of elements that make up Where The Light Leaves, Varials remain a band that leans into the atmosphere without sacrificing impact. Shifting, swelling, and collapsing, each instrumental decision feels less like a spectacle and more like a punctuation of their journey of reemergence. And their vocals carry a different kind of emotional ache. Not performative…but one of extended exhaustion, one that has gone through the thorns of change and is trying to rebuild while the ground is still shaking underneath you. Where The Light Leaves shows a band that has been through dislocation, the looming threat of self-erasure, and the fragile hope of reemergence that still hangs in the distance as the band approaches the release date for their new album. As Where The Light Leaves bobs and weaves through the tension of wanting to disappear and wanting to be seen, an in limbo state of numbness, and the terror of feeling, Varials find themselves navigating the liminal space between who they were and the version of themselves that lies beyond the horizon-a space that for any band is an uncomfortable place to be, but also a fertile one.

“That’s a good way of putting it. There’s definitely this place where we kind of felt like we were in a limbo period for a lot of writing the record,” Lyons admits. “There are songs that kind of illustrate that point. There are songs where maybe there’s that, you know, the dichotomy of light and dark. Definitely, it’s a theme. And this is definitely where we found ourselves, a lot of the time during the writing of the record. We didn’t know what was going on with the band. We obviously had a member change, so there was good and bad, and I think it was, you know, indicative of what we were going through, all the themes, you know, light, dark, and the in between of everything. We hadn’t released music for three years at that point. We released our last record in 2022, so yeah, it was definitely scary, like going through the member change and like waiting to see what people thought about the new songs. We’re very happy with the reception. We’re very happy with the songs themselves. There was a lot of doubt. But I think we found ourselves in a better place here. It does feel like a reinvention. It’s kind of the cornerstone for the future here. So, we’re excited.”

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