If you’re I Am the Avalanche, you release anger and bitterness within ball-wrecking lyrics and a well-crafted, emo-to-the-skies, rock-your-balls-off album.

You see, Vinnie Caruana, the band’s lead singer and songwriter was once the lead crooner for The Movielife. He’s gone through the human journey of ups and downs, going from playing to 3,000 kids to working construction in Brooklyn within days after The Movielife was no more.

With the self-titled debut, his experiences between the years of his old band and the new Avalanche come out, “I took a beating in 2003…I took a baseball bat straight to the knees / I buckled over in the cold Brooklyn street,” along with a torrid breakup of who was thought to be the future Ms. Caruana, “You left me hanging like a noose” and “At the bottom of a swimming pool / I think I found a clue.”

Even in the most morbid times, Caruana’s poetry turns pain into a rose, albeit with thorns, “Promise me / if we both die violently that the blood dripping from our chin is a symphony.”

If you only have an hour and need a release, both musicially and emotionally, this Avalanche prescription could be your cure. If you don’t have the patience for yoga, you’re liver is killing you already, and carpel tunnel has left you helplessly without a controller, pay the extra money and fill up the tank. Barrel down the highway with Avalanche blaring on that stereo you stole from the schmuck down the street. Learn the words and sing real loud.

Or better yet, drive the car over to Club 156 in Boulder this Friday, October 14 where they'll bust open the small club. Then you may just be able to face the world again.

www.purevolume.com/iamtheavalanche
www.drivethrurecords.com/iataecard/

-Kim Owens, October 14, 2005

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