There is probably a hard drive somewhere containing the beginning of far more band reunions than anyone realizes. In Vespera’s case, the road back started with something considerably less dramatic than a reunion announcement: someone reopened an old session intending to finish one song. That session led back to The Thoughts That Plague You, the 14-song album Vespera had originally written as one complete body of work before circumstances split it across three separate releases. Somewhere in the process of putting those pieces back together, a band that had spent nearly five years quiet started becoming a band again.
Vespera formed in 2016 after four musicians who had never met gathered in Seattle and began building what the band has always loosely called “genre-bending rock.” That description is probably more useful than trying to cram them neatly into progressive metal, alternative metal, post-hardcore, or whatever other box happens to be available. Their early material combined technical guitar work and heavier rhythms with considerably more atmospheric instincts, while the lyrics kept circling psychological tension, identity, isolation, and the complicated business of trying to live inside your own head. Their debut “Bloom” arrived in 2017, and by September of that year Kerrang! was premiering “Obsidian Dreams”, calling the band’s sound big, technical, and built around a particularly nasty groove.
That early attention was not isolated. Vespera’s archived press material documents coverage from Billboard, Revolver, Rock Sound, Alternative Press, Kerrang!, Consequence, New Noise and others, along with placements across Spotify’s rock and metal editorial playlists. In a 2017 interview with Prelude Press, vocalist Casval Wolfe, then publicly credited as Jonathan Wolfe, described Vespera as his attempt to make something genuinely honest after becoming exhausted with parts of the music industry. He also talked about wanting the project to build an actual community without depending on the expectations of labels or other industry gatekeepers. Nearly a decade later, that old interview reads a little differently now that the band is trying to build Vespera again.
Because things were moving. Then they very suddenly weren’t.
The pandemic was the obvious wrecking ball, but the collapse did not happen in one clean motion. A recent report on Vespera’s return details a 2021 NateWantsToBattle tour that had already been rescheduled once before COVID spread through members of the touring crew and ended the run early. Touring expenses were climbing, the band’s vehicle was involved in a hit-and-run, and their trailer was stolen because apparently the universe had not made itself sufficiently clear the first few times. For a completely independent band paying its own way, eventually the math stopped making sense.
Vespera went quiet, but the musicians did not disappear with it. During those years, members of the band continued touring and working with artists including Jutes, Phem, Scene Queen, Demi Lovato, KT Tunstall, Matt Corby and Carlie Hanson. Drummer Jonathan Schwartz and guitarist Cairn Tse-Lalonde have most recently been working on the road with Jutes, meaning the years between Vespera then and Vespera now were not exactly spent collecting dust. They were spent inside other tours, other creative processes and other corners of an industry the band originally entered as a completely independent project.
That makes the return to The Thoughts That Plague You considerably more interesting than simply pulling an old release off the shelf.
The record existed publicly, technically. The three pieces were released as A Fragile Seed in 2020, Fading Light in 2021, and The Thoughts That Plague You later that same year. The current Bandcamp release still reflects that final five-song EP rather than the 14-song sequence originally envisioned. The songs were out there, but the album was not really being heard as an album.
That distinction gets more interesting when you go back to what Vespera was saying before any of those EPs existed. In 2017, Wolfe was already discussing The Thoughts That Plague You as a deeply personal debut record and describing “Bloom” as only an introduction to what the larger project was trying to say. Eight years later, the band is returning to the material with the benefit, or possible curse, of being able to hear exactly who they were when they wrote it.
Wolfe has now started explaining that original sequence publicly. In a new track-by-track published by Kill The Music, he describes the record as a progression through self-erasure, rebellion, nostalgia, escapism, accountability, anger and eventually a more complicated understanding of compassion. He also admits that several choices sound different to him now, including arrangements he would change and lyrics whose vulnerability carries a different weight after five years away.
That is the part of this story we are most interested in.
There is a strange tendency around band reunions to pretend time functions like a pause button. Everyone disappears for five years, somebody posts an old logo, and suddenly we are all expected to return to the exact emotional coordinates where we left off. Vespera does not really have that option. The musicians spent those years working in other people’s worlds, while the songs themselves sat frozen in recordings made by earlier versions of the same people. Now the band has to figure out what still fits.
Even the story of the return seems appropriately accidental. Wolfe reopened an old session because one unfinished song continued bothering him. That became another session, then another, until the original architecture of the 14-song album came back into view. Conversations with friends about Vespera eventually turned into conversations about playing again, and those conversations have now reportedly led to a touring opportunity for 2027. Apparently accidentally resurrecting your band because you opened the wrong project file is one way to spend an evening.
It also makes this a much better story than a straightforward comeback announcement.
Pretty Loud Mag will be sitting down with Vespera to talk about the years between these versions of the band, what actually happened when the momentum stopped, how touring with other artists changed the musicians who eventually came back to these songs, and what it feels like to hear The Thoughts That Plague You as the complete record it was originally supposed to be. We will also be reviewing the reconstructed album on its own terms, because old press coverage can tell us that people were paying attention in 2017, but it cannot tell us whether these 14 songs still work when they are finally placed next to each other nearly a decade later.
That answer has to come from the record.
There is plenty of history sitting behind Vespera now, but the more interesting question is what they plan to do with it. The band disappeared right when things were beginning to get interesting. Somehow, after nearly five years away, they have managed to return at exactly the same point.
Our full interview with Vespera and review of The Thoughts That Plague You are coming soon to Pretty Loud Mag.