Emery, & Maylene and the Sons of Disaster

Southern rock never dies; it just hangs on the sidelines until another of its native sons takes up the mantle. Maylene frontman Dallas Taylor is another artist picking up the greasy licks, hard-charging boogie, and country-fried rawk codified by acts like The Allman Brothers, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and .38 Special. Taylor’s crew injects a hearty dose of hard-rock posturing and a dash of metalcore aggression into arena-ready Southern blues crunch. It’s not as brutal as his past output, boasting bigger hooks and plenty of chunky riffage that make tracks like “Dry the River” and “The Old Iron Hills” ideal for a backwoods kegger. Maylene’s new release, III, is their most accessible to date, with a keen balance of foot-stomping grooves and hair-flying guitar pyrotechnics, as well as Taylor’s most/best actual singing to date. Headliner Emery have struggled to define their identity at times, thanks to the bursts of dreamy textured rock and math-y, post-punk throwdowns that inhabit their Christian metalcore sound. Their latest, In Shallow Seas We Sail, rediscovers the screamo roar of their debut without sacrificing the melodic acumen of prior albums, producing their darkest, hardest-hitting arrangements and still allowing light to shine on tracks like “Inside Our Skin.”