After years of setbacks, reinvention, and creative persistence, Age of Legends finally emerges as a defining statement of both artistic vision and personal transformation. What began in early 2019 as an ambitious concept album evolved through a global pandemic, major life changes, and an extended period of reflection that ultimately reshaped not only the music, but the mindset behind it. Blending a wide spectrum of sonic influences with a deeply introspective narrative inspired by the myth of Sisyphus, the record stands as a meditation on guilt, perseverance, and, above all, self-forgiveness. In this conversation, we dive into the long journey behind the album, the philosophy that drives it, and how its creator turned struggle into catharsis.
M.I. - Age of Legends has been in the making since early 2019, surviving the pandemic and years of setbacks. Did the long gestation ultimately strengthen the album, or were there moments when you feared it might never be finished?
There were times that I was sure it was never going to be done. But I also think that some of the extra time we spent on it allowed us to finish it the way it needed to be, and gave us some reflection time and perspective that you don’t often get. It can be really dangerous to the final product though - you can easily overcook something like that. Spending too much time on something leads to overthinking, second-guessing, and oftentimes straight up ruining something, so I’m glad that didn’t happen.
M.I. - How did your mindset as musicians, and as people, change between starting and finally completing the record?
I don’t think anything really fundamental changed about our mindset - we still have the same musical mission and drive. We had some life stuff - Rami and Jamie both got married and each had a kid in the meantime, I went from an employee to a small business owner, we went through the pandemic of course.
However, our mindset around our approach to releasing music changed as a result of the experience. One of the nice things about putting out an album is that now we get to make new music - and this time, we’re gonna do it real differently. We’re set up now as pretty much a full music and video production team, so we can write, record, mix/master, film and edit video, and release anything we want on our own timeline. So we can write a single and drop it in a few weeks, without having to wait around for anyone else.
M.I. - Some songs on the album date back over ten years, while others are far more recent. How challenging was it to unify material written across such different periods of your life? Were there any songs that had to be completely reimagined to fit the final concept?
Because the core concept of the album never changed, it was easy to keep a high level of consistency across all of the tracks, even across a long time period. Nothing really had to be retconned into our little musical cinematic universe. Also, the concept is pretty universal and doesn’t change across time - I feel like I’m always pushing a rock up a hill, every day, on so many different levels. I can see it in the broader, long-term cycles of my life, throughout the history of mankind, the rise and fall of empires, me doing my laundry. I could have written a hundred more songs about it, to be honest. I had to kind of stop myself at a certain point.
M.I. - At its core, Age of Legends is a concept album inspired by Sisyphus, reframed through the lens of self-forgiveness rather than eternal punishment. Why did this myth resonate with you now?
When I was first writing these songs, I was going through a pretty big life change. I was feeling like a gigantic failure, like nothing I had done had mattered, and although I hadn’t done anything wrong or hurt anyone like Sisyphus did in the myth, I was really down on myself just about my life path up to that point. Through writing this album and these songs, I really found the path to self-forgiveness, and a new metric for how I gauge myself as a person. I worked through the idea by asking myself the same kind of hard questions that the Catalyst asks Sisyphus, and it put a lot of things in perspective for me. Why was I punishing myself so harshly, when my crime was really nothing? If I was someone else, would I judge me the same way?
M.I. - Do you see this album as a personal reckoning, or more of an universal reflection on guilt and redemption?
It’s very much both - I see every person as a microcosm, and every personal story an opportunity for a universal parable. We’re all far more alike than we are different, and we all experience similar life challenges and trials - we’re all born, grow, love people, lose people, eat/sleep/shit/fuck and eventually die. Every story is relatable in some way, and every story has a larger takeaway.
But some stories and concepts hit closer than others. I don’t dwell on the why of it too much - I don’t remember exactly where or when I really discovered that the Sisyphus story was the one for me, or what it was about it that grabbed me by the short hairs. It definitely wasn’t the first time I’d encountered it. But I knew that it was wrong. The idea of eternal punishment is wrong. It doesn’t make any fucking sense to me. That’s not justice. Eternity isn’t just a really long time. We live a hundred years and think that’s a long time. There’s nothing you can do in a hundred years that could justify an eternal torment. You can do a lot of evil in a short lifetime, enough to warrant a long slow cook in hell, the proverbial pineapple-up-the-ass-a-day like in Little Nicky. But not eternity.
And the truth about forgiveness is that we seek it from others so we can feel allowed to give it to ourselves. Man created imaginary higher powers to impose their own tyrannical ideas of punishment and forgiveness to tame a primitive world of terrified idiots, and we internalized all of that over thousands of years - but the only person you really crave forgiveness from is yourself.
M.I. - The introduction of The Catalyst as a guiding force is fascinating. Is The Catalyst an external character, an inner voice, or something more symbolic? How crucial was this figure in allowing the story, and the album, to reach its emotional resolution?
In the album lyrics, The Catalyst is a real external character, but she represents my internal voice of reason, which is very important to how I view the world. These conversations represent how I’ve come to some important conclusions about the nature of the universe and how we move through it. But it also kind of highlights the importance of getting outside of the echo chamber of your own mind - you can’t just believe everything you think. If Sisyphus did that, he’d still be stuck in the boulder loop. She helps him to see a different way, first through whispers and suggestion, then through direct confrontational argument.
M.I. - In Virtue has always defied easy categorization: progressive metal, power metal, groove, pop, orchestral elements all coexist here. Do you consciously avoid genre labels, or is this blend simply the most honest expression of who you are musically? Has the pressure to “fit somewhere” in the modern metal landscape ever affected your creative choices?
I genuinely never consider any of that stuff when I’m making music for In Virtue. I just use sounds that I like, and what fits the song. It mostly creates a problem after the fact when I have to come up with things to say in a press release or something - like, how do I describe what we are to someone who has no context for it? It makes the “elevator pitch” too long and unwieldy for marketing purposes.
M.I. - “Gunslingers of the New American Desert” is described as the heaviest and slowest song in your entire catalog. What made this track the right vehicle for the album’s themes of tyranny, survival, and lost humanity?
It was kind of an experiment in the creation - can I write something that’s slow that I don’t hate? I’m drawn to fast music - that’s what excites me, makes my brain go “brrrrrrr”. But I also love to challenge myself musically. The vibe that came out of it felt like a slow trudge across the desert, like the Jawa sandcrawler in Star Wars or the urRu from Dark Crystal. It sparked the idea for a dark chapter of the story, reflecting the darker parts of US history and the evil side of lawless opportunity. It just sounded like all that to me, and it came out one of the best songs on the album for me.
M.I. - The album features powerful guest appearances from Charlotte Wessels, Chaney Crabb, and guitar work from Dave Davidson. How did you decide which voices belonged in this story? Did these collaborators bring unexpected emotional or musical dimensions to the songs?
Each of the guest spots on the album was a moment where I felt like I needed someone else to say something, to give it more weight in a way. In the case of Karma Loop, I needed a second voice to have a conversation with, which is a lot cooler to not have to do with myself hahaha. Charlotte was the clear choice because she’s the absolute best to work with. Chaney is someone whose voice and music I’ve admired for a long time, and also gotten to work with in the past, and when I got to that part of Tempus Fugue, I knew it just HAD to be her, it just fit too perfectly. Dave was the same - he has such a unique voice on his instrument, and it was a place in the song that needed an outside voice to bring a fresh perspective. They all brought exactly what the songs needed.
M.I. - From “Ascent Glorious” to “Descent Limitless,” the album feels deliberately paced like a journey. How early did you know where the album needed to end emotionally? Was there a specific track where everything finally clicked and the full vision became clear?
Part of why the process took so long was that once I’d decided that it was going to be a full album based on this concept, I had to tell the whole story. I couldn’t just slap some songs together and call it an album, it had to be a complete journey that wrapped up in a satisfying way. I think it was during the writing of Tempus Fugue that it really started to feel like the end was coming. It was one that I was sort of adding to throughout the process of writing the other songs, knowing that it was going to be the big finale, it had to have sort of bits and pieces of everything that came before - sort of like how the big final showdown in a movie has to have the main important characters in it and show you their fate. When I hit on the idea to reprise Push That Rock, it really felt like it came together. That’s really the finale of the album, and then Descent Limitless is just the rideout after the climax.
M.I. - The press notes suggest Age of Legends could be an album that defines a phase of life rather than just accompanying one. What do you personally hope listeners take away from this record? If someone is struggling with guilt or self-forgiveness, what do you hope this album gives them?
I want people to more closely scrutinize how they are treating themselves based on how they perceive their own shortcomings and mistakes, and to consider whether they are punishing themselves over and over for the same things - and whether or not they deserve that. I think that more often than not, we feel crushing guilt and failure long after we should, and then we extend that negative feeling to those around us, even subconsciously. I want this album to help the listener look deep and really see if they’re doing that to themselves, and that they experience a cathartic release from it.
M.I. - Trey wrote, recorded, and produced the 70,000 Tons of Metal 2024 theme song. How does working on something as communal and celebratory as that contrast with the deeply introspective nature of Age of Legends?
It’s definitely something to write a big party anthem after such an emotionally heavy work of art. It felt good, and also kind of like a reward. We can’t forget to reward ourselves for our good work, and to enjoy all the fruits of our labors, because otherwise, what are we even doing? The 70,000 Tons of Metal cruise is my big vacation every year, so it felt right to give them the big anthem they deserve. Getting to play that song on the cruise this year was a pretty great full-circle moment as well.
M.I. - After everything this album has endured… from time, distance, and global upheaval… what does finally releasing Age of Legends mean to you, right now, in this moment?
Freedom, and catharsis.
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Questions by Sónia Fonseca
