Vanna Announce Reunion, Release New Music

Hello everybody, and welcome back to the No Skip Blog! Today we are here to discuss the exciting return of New England metalcore legends, Vanna! For those of you who don’t know, Vanna was an influential post-hardcore/metalcore group from the early 2000s, hailing from Boston, MA, who unfortunately disbanded in late 2017.

The band would make an eventual comeback in 2020 with the project INSPIRIT, consisting of all previous Vanna members; Nicholas Lambert, Chrise Preece, Evan Pharmakis, Brandon Davis, and Shawn Marquis. Founding guitarist of both Vanna and INSPIRIT, Nicholas Lambert, stated on the new band after its formation, "we wanted to do something that fit into that sound we were doing back in 2006, but just done smarter and with better production." But, with recent times the band has decided to forego the alias and bring back the old name with the exact same lineup, excluding former Vanna vocalist Davey Muise. Celebrating fifteen years of their second album, A New Hope, last summer the band decided to drop a whole new single under the Vanna name, titled Quiet Place. This would serve as the band's first single since 2016, just before they disbanded. On February 28th the band would comment on the new release via Instagram, saying “INSPIRIT was a fun throwback chapter, it was always part of the same story. Now, we’re continuing that story under the name it started with: Vanna."

As stated above, the band would bring back the prime, original members of Vanna but without past vocalist Davey Muise, who would be the lead vocalist for most of the band's tenure. This would be due to allegations circulating in 2020 about the singer, involving sexual misconduct and emotional abuse, via a post from X (formerly Twitter), link here: https://x.com/JayyKess/status/1278897620405059586.

This controversy would eventually lead to Muise’s departure from Vanna, going on to sing in the project Trove shortly after, and Vanna’s dissolvement.

While with the band, Muise had the pleasure to be vocals on the band's last four records before splitting up, replacing original vocalist Chris Preece after he left for “personal reasons” but on good terms. AllMusic would go on to describe the band's work with Muise as “a continuation of previous work, with some familiar melodic metalcore-style songs, and much the same singing from Muise as had been heard from Preece.” After the allegations and Muise’s departure from Vanna, he would go on to make a statement regarding his mental health and place in life before joining Trove a year later;

Throughout the last decade, I’ve been on a journey that has taken me to the highest of highs and the lowest of lows. My mental health recovery from my trauma filled past has been a constant struggle throughout my life. It will always be. Through therapy in my early years, I discovered music and writing was my way to cope.

Over the years, sharing that music has always helped my journey, progress. If you’ve ever spoken to me, or if you know me well, you know that I share everything with anyone who will listen. Over time, I learned I wasn’t alone in my fight and the progress I made, made me think I was finally okay, that I was fixed.

However, I failed to recognize that this journey is a never ending one. When I began touring, I wasn’t yet equipped with the proper tools to be away from my support group, let alone support others. I made trauma bonds all over the world through music and did not understand how delicate those bonds can be. Most of those connections were brief, constructive and wholesome. Helping others simply helped me.

But through some of those connections, I became intertwined in people’s lives, and certain groups of people, that I wasn’t healthy enough to be in. I lacked healthy boundaries for myself, which made it impossible to create healthy friendships with those people.

Due to that, I created a space in with unknown harm could be done. Not having clear communication was unhealthy for myself and created unsustainable and unhealthy expectations of who I am, to others.

Though I’m proud of the progress I’ve made, I know I have a long way to go. My journey to better myself, to bleed out my toxic traits and unlearning years of negative practice, is ongoing forever. Earlier this year, I took a step back from public life and mental health work to resume therapy and focus on these issues.

I’m leaning new ways to create and respect boundaries for myself and how to clearly and effectively communicate with others. I will continue to strife to right my wrongs and own my failures.

This journey requires me to reach out to individuals and I’ve spent the last few months doing that. But as I continue to try and mend, I understand some of those friendships cannot be repaired on either side. I’ll take those as lessons learned for a better future me.

Mental health is fragile, it’s not a bargaining chip or a tool to maintain a connection with someone and everyone must protect their own. I will strive every day to constantly be a better version of myself, meet myself where I’m at and never take for granted the journeys and experiences of others. (https://www.theprp.com/2020/09/10/news/ex-vanna-frontman-davey-muise-issues-statement-following-allegations/)

The world would go on to shut down soon after Trove began their run, the project and Muise seemingly fading into obscurity since then.

Not all of Vanna’s past members would follow this path however. As briefly mentioned in the beginning of the article, the 2006 Vanna lineup would go on to form INSPIRIT in October of 2020 with the release of their debut single Fold. The formation would be a direct result of the 2020 pandemic, leading the old time friends to reconnect during this sudden free time to make a project that was “Vanna, in spirit.” However, the “new” band would go on to release only a handful of singles, including Fold, before the initial announcement that they decided to return to the Vanna name and include these separate releases into the band's repertoire last December. Guitarist Nick Lambert would go on to say “"Yeah we didn't set out with some plan to get back to the Vanna name but after some years of playing under INSPIRIT and gradually adding more of our original material back in it just felt confusing for us as well as fans. We just sort of decided on it right before the holiday show in December! It's gonna be fun!"

So with a bit of soul searching and self-reflection it seems fans can be ecstatic with this revamped version of Vanna officially returning to the metalcore scene stronger than ever! As always, thanks for reading and happy listening!