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Artist
I Am Empire
12+ albums
alternative rockrockalternativepost-hardcorechristian
about
Sometimes the most compelling art can come from life’s greatest struggles, which in the case of Tooth & Nail newcomers I Am Empire, only added fuel to the group’s already blazing alternative rock fire. Though the San Jose-bred fivesome had no trouble igniting the local scene since forming in 2008, including dates alongside Flyleaf, Sublime, Deftones, Silversun Pickups, Thursday, Four Year Strong and The Wedding, a pair of charting singles (“You’re A Fake” and “The Elevator”), plus additional acclaim from Alternative Press, AOL’s Spinner.com and San Francisco’s LIVE105 radio station, much of the catalyst behind the band’s label debut Kings stems from front man Austin Lyons’ fractured upbringing. “The whole record is about abandonment, particularly the fact that my father is the one who abandoned me,” says the scorching singer/songwriter for I Am Empire (whose moniker is basically a battle cry to be yourself and never feel pressured towards conformity). “We decided to name the record Kings because it signifies the head of a household, and if you’ve been abandoned, you want to look past that person and try to be better when you grow up. The goal is to take up the crown that person left behind and be better than the person who left, which can really apply to any type of relationship.” Yet the plot thickens in the case of Lyons, whose biological dad may have left when he was ten, though a stepfather entered the picture a little later down the line. In time, this new father figur
