I Am The Avalanche

I Am The Avalanche is a force you just can’t kill. Over its decade-and-a-half existence, the Brooklyn band has routinely faced and overcome personal, professional and existential challenges. Enter DIVE, I Am The Avalanche’s first album since 2014’s Wolverines and a convincing new chapter in the band’s hard-earned reputation. Out November 20 on I Surrender Records, DIVE confronts a crushing year for independent musicians and comes out guns blazing, wall-to-wall with anthemic post-hardcore fight songs.

“Reality came to us all this year,” says frontperson Vinnie Caruana. “You’ve lived this long. If you’re not enjoying life -- if you can’t find light somewhere -- I think it’s time to go and find it.”

Recording sessions for DIVE wrapped March 15, 2020, the weekend much of America first came to terms with the severity of the COVID-19 pandemic and took shelter indoors. After some last-call lyrical additions (notably the title track’s resounding salvo, “We suffer together / no one’s alone”) Caruana fled North Jersey’s Barber Shop Studios to quarantine with his wife Laura in Brooklyn. Nevertheless, they were quickly hit with awful news. “We both got sick with coronavirus and quarantined together,” Caruana says. “Having her with me was a huge part of why this year wasn’t as dark as it could have been.”

Caruana acknowledges the good fortune of their eventual recoveries after a couple bedridden weeks, along with the fact most of DIVE’s most dire lyrics were penned prior to the lockdown. “This has been coming,” he insists. “Pre-pandemic, things were still shitty. Our country has been turned upside-down by the current administration. So the songs that sound like they were written yesterday... I don’t think that’s going to change.”

Across DIVE, Caruana and guitarist/songwriting partner Mike Ireland, bassist Kellen Robson, and guitarist Brandon Swanson plow through emotional maelstroms with cutting wit and hard- earned wisdom. Drummer Brett “The Ratt” Romnes, a powerhouse behind the kit and the band’s producer, is the keeper of Avalanche’s melodic flame. The band’s mission statement is clear from the opening jolt of “Better Days” through the first line of “The Morning,” DIVE’s mountainous closer: "If I'm still alive come the morning, if I somehow make it through / you'll be the reason I still breathe; yes, I'll owe it all to you."

Plenty of I Am The Avalanche fans have been shouting along to Caruana’s lyrics since he first grabbed the mic for Long Island legends The Movielife in the late ‘90s; with DIVE, that connection may be less tactile, but it’s every bit as vital.

“Artists like us make our money on tour and that ain’t happening any time soon,” Caruana says. “We all need this for our souls. For my relationship with music, I need this record to come out, to have people hear what we’ve made. Maybe this record will be there for somebody... I’m sure that it will.”