The Forum

Down past the restaurants and shops of St. Louis, in the coves of corner venues and basements, you’ll find our local rock music scene. New show posters and bands are popping up every day, with self-proclaimed “visual-core” band Dante No Bara being one of them. With the release of their debut album Take Me Back To War and more music on the way, they wish to establish a new style, share their story and find their own place in our scene.

“Wikipedia would call us post hardcore, alt metal and metal core. But we've been trying to coin the term visual core, because it takes the metal core name, but also adds the influence from visual keys that I take with vocals,” said lead singer Maddux Younce, who also uses the stage name Dante.

The band consists of Younce as the singer, Luis Drury on bass, Trevor Hurd on drums, and Benny Mayer as both the band’s guitar player and producer. Together, they meld inspiration from both J-Rock bands like Jiluka and Maximum the Hormone and American rock bands like Black Veil Brides and Avenged Sevenfold to create something new.

“When we started it out, we wanted to be scenecore, crabcore, electronic. We quickly realized that wasn’t unique and that it got very boring, so we just started messing around to find our style. We kind of took that metalcore style that we had talked about in the beginning, and after screwing around with a lot of different genres and styles, we found a happy medium,” Younce said. “We have an unapologetically gent-y, modern metal sound sometimes, but it’s not overproduced. Nothing is too predictable and it's all really technical, but mixed with raw craziness.”

Along with inspiration from other music, media like From Software video games and the Studio Ghibli films are also a big inspiration for how Younce writes and how his band curates their sound, adding fantasy and action elements into their music.

“We're all inspired by stories of big action, stories of big emotion, big events, loss, anger,” said Younce. “I’ll be watching something or playing a game and something a character says relates to something I am feeling and activates that within me and I can just start spilling out over the top theatric sentences around the emotions that I am feeling.”

Their inspiration from media can be seen in their name alone. Dante No Bara, which means Dante’s Rose in Japanese, references the story of Dante’s Inferno. The story follows a man who must traverse each circle of hell to save his fiance from Lucifer.

“Dante’s inferno is the most human of theatrical stories. It has these monsters and this larger than life idea of the nine circles of hell, yet it feels so human because it's all about a man chasing who he once was, chasing his true love, chasing redemption, chasing to feel solace, and he just doesn’t get it. He fights demons and nothing comes from it,” said Younce. It’s the fact that someone had such love and passion for something that they would genuinely fight through the nine circles of hell for just a chance to have that thing again.”

One method that Dante No Bara uses to craft something unique is experimenting with different song formats, taking inspiration from band Chiodos who often have no repeating parts in their songs.

“We are moving away from verse chorus, verse chorus, like with our song ‘Love and Vain’ which has a whole outro that's different from the whole rest of the song,” Mayer said. “Are we catchy? Yes. Do we write emotional, big melodies? Yes. But we don’t do it in the intro, verse, chorus, bridge, breakdown, chorus, format.”

Dante No Bara isn’t just about music; their visuals are just as important. The brother of drummer Hurd, Aiden Hurd, provides all visuals for the band, helping the band to expand their story even further.

“Aiden’s a huge part, just a fifth member at this point. We wouldn't be what we are without that visual as direction. And we're gonna be one of those bands who, down the line in the future, can release an art book of just nothing but our designs and story illustrations and stuff like that,” said Younce.

Another thing that helps to drive their image and musical style is choosing to use modern technology in a scene filled with DIY, stripped down bands.

“We use modern tech, but, but not in the way that a lot of people use it as a &@%#ing crutch. Every musician in our band has the skill and has a lot of talent. Aesthetics are so important, and we use modern stuff to help us create a bigger vision than some bands do. I've done the whole DIY, no aesthetics, just music, and that's cool. But ultimately, we really want to take this somewhere and create a larger-than-life story with this band,” Younce said.

Because of their unique music style, flashy visuals and their use of modern tech, it is not the easiest to find where they fit into the St. Louis rock and metal scene.

“I don't think we really feud, or clash with any particular group. We like trading ideas and whatnot, and seeing different people play live, it's cool. We just love all kinds of music.” Younce said. “But the weird part about it is that we just also aren't a direct part of anything around us, because we just don't fit into it. And most of the things around us kind of require you to follow their kind of blueprint if you want to be a part of it.”

From Younce’s perspective, the St. Louis scene is not as thriving or as accepting as some may say it is.

“Everything has to fall into place how people want it to fall in place. It’s all gotten so divided. The ‘thriving’ groups are just big friend groups who are all going to each other's shows. The people who are really striving for something greater don’t really have anything to catapult off of. Right now, if you aren't doing what everyone else is doing, you aren't really accepted,” said Younce.

Despite each challenge the scene may throw at them, Dante No Bara does not plan on slowing down. Their new album is just the beginning for them and the story they are creating.

“We have one album out, and it doesn’t tell our whole story. By the end of our story, it will have touched the deepest parts of what being human is through life and through death,” Younce said. “I ultimately think that we are all just chasing solace like Dante was. We’re all just chasing some sort of love, or some sort of comfort, or some kind of contentment, to be happy with ourselves in the short life we have.

You can find their music on all major platforms.