Vaux

Hailing from Denver, the metal outfit Vaux features six members: guitar and keyboard player Greg Daniels, drummer Joe McChan, bassist Ryder Robison, vocalist Quentin Smith, and guitarists Chris Sorensen and Adam Tymn. The group first assembled in 1997 as Eiffel and began developing its post-grunge sound in Tymn’s basement. While still enrolled in college, the musicians issued the self-released 7-inch single “To Write a Symphony” the following year and spent the next two years funding their own West Coast performances. Eventually the independent label Undecided agreed to put out the band’s debut full-length, Audiblenarcotic, which surfaced in 2000 and earned strong college-radio attention. That summer Vaux secured a slot on the annual Vans Warped Tour, yet legal issues prompted the name change from Eiffel to Vaux. Energized by the rebranding, the sextet crafted a punk-inflected approach for its 2002 follow-up, On Life; Living. The next spring, after the appearance of There Must Be Some Way to Stop Them, Alternative Press named Vaux among its “100 Bands to Watch.” In 2004 the band reissued Audiblenarcotic and gained further visibility through another stint on the tenth Warped Tour plus select West Coast support dates for Auf der Maur. September brought the Plague Music EP, Vaux’s debut release on Equal Vision. That same year the group signed with Atlantic’s Lava subsidiary and began work on its third album, Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice, slated for fall 2005. Before the record could come out, however, the label dropped the band. Vaux regained the master rights in 2006 and issued Beyond Virtue, Beyond Vice a year later on its own Vx imprint, supporting the release with yet another Warped Tour appearance.