EPK – In Virtue – Age of Legends (2025)
Publicist – Jon Asher – jon[@]ashermediarelations[.]com
“I think they’ll be pleasantly surprised, because although it builds on our past releases, it’s really the ultimate form of the same beast. The casual listener will be able to enjoy all of it without clocking the story, but anyone who wants to go deeper will be rewarded with the dark journey of a deeply flawed character on a quest to forgive himself by asking the big questions, making mistakes, and doing the hard work. It’s an emotional deep dive, a rollercoaster of textures and colors, but a cohesive trip that doesn’t just feel like a series of disconnected singles. A true concept album, the kind you should turn your phone off and light a candle to listen to on your bed with headphones from start to finish. A relatable protagonist who seeks what we all seek, to love himself in spite of himself and his flaws, to know himself deeply, and to win his battle against crushing self-doubt.” – Trey Xavier – In Virtue
For fans of Soilwork, Amaranthe, Shinedown, Symphony X, Bad Wolves
Band: In Virtue
Album: Age of Legends
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Label: Self-Release
Distribution: CMM/Orchard
Album Length: 50:40
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Album: Age of Legends
Release Date: November 21, 2025
Label: Self-Release
Distribution: CMM/Orchard
Album Length: 50:40
Track Listing:
1. Ascent Glorious (00:36)
2. Sisyphus Awakening (4:55)
3. Karma Loop (ft. Charlotte Wessels) (3:35)
4. Push That Rock (2:46)
5. Purgatory (4:39)
6. Exposed (3:27)
7. Scream (3:40)
8. Where The Edges Meet (3:16)
9. Gunslingers of the New American Desert (4:42)
10. Desolation Throne (3:03)
11. Thoughts in Freefall (ft. Dave Davidson of Revocation) (4:10)
12. The River (2:24)
13. Tempus Fugue (ft. Chaney Crabb of Entheos) (8:05)
14. Descent Limitless (1:22)
Album Length: 50:40
Produced by Trey Xavier
Mixed by Mazen Ayoub and Miami Dolphin
Additional mixing by Alexander Backlund
Mastered by Jens Bogren and Tony Lindgren at Fascination Street Studios
Cover art by Niklas Sundin
Additional vocal engineering by Eyal Levi on “Purgatory” and “Where the Edges Meet”
Guest vocals on “Karma Loop” by Charlotte Wessels
Guest vocals on “Tempus Fugue” by Chaney Crabb of Entheos
Guest guitar solo on “Thoughts in Freefall” by Dave Davidson of Revocation
Additional background vocals by Court Henson
Tracked at 1008 Studios, Prairie Sun Studios, West Alley Studios
Member of ASCAP
Trey Xavier – Guitar, Vocals
Alex Nasla – Keyboards, Vocals
Rami Khalaf – Lead Guitar
Jamie Hush – Bass
Mazen Ayoub – Drums
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About The Album Artwork:
When I saw the cover for Dark Tranquillity’s “Character” album, I knew I had to have something like it. So I looked up the artist, who turned out to be their (now former) guitarist Niklas Sundin. I commissioned him to create the cover art, which depicts Sisyphus breaking out of his eternal punishment of rolling a boulder up a mountain forever. He is returning to the real world, and the boulder rolls down the hill behind him. Niklas was excellent to work with, and he took the concept I gave him and really brought it into reality with such a unique flavor.
About the album as a whole (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
On this album, the lyrics are extremely personal. It’s a story about a character, but he’s just the proxy for my own experiences and ideas. It’s a concept album about someone who has made poor choices in the past and is on a journey of self-forgiveness. The character in the story is based on Sisyphus, who was a terrible, tyrannical king who was deserving of punishment – but is there truly anything someone can do to deserve eternal punishment?
In it, this Sisyphus character decides (with a little help from a character called The Catalyst) that after thousands of years of torment, he’s done his time and that he’s going to seek forgiveness from the most important person we all need it from – ourselves.
I wrote it as a way of working through my own self-imposed punishment for my own failures and shortcomings, a catharsis to carve a way forward for myself. Realistically, none of us will ever do anything nearly as horrible as Sisyphus or any equivalent monster. But we still often hold the regret and guilt over our heads for so long.
As I wrote in the song “Purgatory”,
“Paper handcuffs and shadow walls
Shackled here by guilt alone”
So it’s about releasing ourselves from this state and moving on with our lives, because until you do, you can’t do any good in the world, for yourself or anyone else.
Musically, it’s built on a classic foundation of heavy riffs and groovy drums, but with layers of cinematic elements like synths and orchestration to transport the listener and elevate the songs at key moments. It’s not symphonic metal in the traditional sense like Nightwish or something – the orchestration isn’t there as an end unto itself, or to just make it epic. Vocally, it covers a lot of range, from gritty powerful cleans to more guttural growls and screams, and a lot in between. There are a fair bit of guitar and keyboard solos, but none overstay their welcome.
Track by Track (LYRICALLY & MUSICALLY):
1. Ascent Glorious
This is the album intro – it’s purely orchestration, and it introduces the primary melodic theme, as well as what I call “The Sound” – a sort of bell-like tone that represents The Catalyst’s awakening of Sisyphus from his torment.
It’s a bit Disney, but I love the melody so much. It comes back several times throughout the album, in different forms and variations.
2. Sisyphus Awakening
This song is one of the first I wrote for the album. It has an extremely strong opening, and it segues nicely from the intro track, I think. Since it’s one of the older ones, it still has a bit of leftover prog ambition, which I think is apt for it to be so early on in the track listing, then as we move into the future, we move away from it.
It represents exactly what the title says – it’s Sisyphus awakening from the endless grind of his torment, and breaking his shackles to escape from his eternal punishment.
3. Karma Loop
This was actually the last song to be written for the album, I think. It features my friend Charlotte Wessels on vocals, and she brought so much energy and beautiful harmony to the song that it wound up becoming my favorite.
It was actually based around a guitar part (the opening lick of the song) that I wrote a long time ago for a guitar demo for my YouTube channel, and our former drummer, Mazen (Ayoub, who plays on the album) sat down and turned it into a song one day.
Lyrically, it’s a conversation between Sisyphus and The Catalyst, in which she is convincing him that his punishment is self-inflicted, and he is worth doing the work to redeem himself.
Fun fact: The lyrics make reference to an old song by the Kingston Trio called “M.T.A.”, in which a man can’t get off the train because he doesn’t have money to pay his fare, of which he is a nickel short (“one more nickel”). It also references the “buy the ticket, take the ride” quote from Hunter S. Thompson.
4. Push That Rock
In which Sisyphus goes from the lowest possible point in his life to a place of high hope. It consists almost entirely of one line of lyrics: Push that rock back up that hill. It’s a mantra that we’ll revisit later in the album, and between now and then, the meaning will transform – but at this point, it’s his entire existence, it’s all he knows. It’s the torment he brought on himself, and he hates it.
Fun fact: I recorded some of the vocals for this in the Tom Waits room of Prairie Sun studio, on the mic that he sings into on his albums. I thought it fit the vibe pretty perfectly, and we recorded drum tracks there for Purgatory and Where The Edges Meet, so it worked out.
5. Purgatory
This was the first song we recorded and released with the new lineup, when the plan was for Age of Legends to be a 3-song EP. We road-tripped up to Prairie Sun studios in Cotati, California, to track the drums because initially, I was going to record a different drummer for these songs before we found Mazen, and it was too late to get my deposit back.
In this song, he describes the depth of his torment and what he longs to escape from.
6. Exposed
This is one of two songs we worked on with my friend and producer Sahaj.
Lyrically, it describes Sisyphus’ relationship with The Catalyst, and the gift she’s given him by not only setting him free, but by giving him a reason to want to even bother to try.
7. Scream
This is the second of the two songs we worked on with Sahaj, who provided some much-needed perspective on the songs, much like The Catalyst does for Sisyphus.
In this song, we get a closer look at the message from The Catalyst to Sisyphus in his state of eternal punishment. She can’t free him – only he can do that. No one else is coming to save him. In order to break free, he first has to believe he’s worthy, and then he has to care enough to try. He can’t just be complacent – he needs to be angry enough to SCREAM.
8. Where The Edges Meet
This was the second single we released, and the second song we recorded with the new lineup.
Sisyphus is at last free and returns to the real world to find a divided people. He reflects on his personal struggles that led him to act the way he did in his past life, and considers how to move forward in this new world.
This song introduces the album title – Age of Legends – which references a concept I borrowed from The Wheel of Time series. In the Age of Legends, mankind enjoyed peace, prosperity, and technology that became lost due to humanity’s inability to be content and coexist.
Sisyphus again becomes a leader in the modern world by championing this concept, inspiring people to be good to each other and lift each other up. But it won’t last…
9. Gunslingers of the New American Desert
…because power calls to him. In Gunslingers, Sisyphus can’t resist the call, and the song details his breaking bad arc. He sees the opportunity to seize the kind of power he once held, and takes it by force, falling back into his old ways.
I had actually once conceptualized a whole album of sort of post-apocalyptic sci-fi steampunky space Western songs with the same title, and this was the only thing that actually came from it.
This is by far the slowest song in the entire In Virtue catalog, and in my estimation, the heaviest thing I’ve ever written. The lyrics are also very emotionally heavy, describing the tradeoff of humanity for the empty promise of power, and the human toll such a deal takes.
10. Desolation Throne
In which Sisyphus ascends to his throne of evil, convincing himself that he’s earned it by his suffering.
I was trying to channel Russel Allen in my vocal performance, to make it sound mean and evoke a gangster-like quality similar to the Symphony X Underworld album. I also put in a little 2005 metalcore chugging to hearken back to my days watching bands like Unearth and Killswitch Engage at small venues throughout Massachusetts.
The bridge of this song is my favorite single moment on the whole album. It simultaneously shows his emotional insecurity and how small he feels, and how he reacts to that by lashing out at the world that doesn’t understand him and trying to dominate it.
It also features one of my favorite guitar solos.
11. Thoughts in Freefall
In Desolation Throne, he is ascending to power, climbing upwards ever higher without considering how high above the ground he is. He comes to the highest peak possible – there’s no higher he could go.
Consumed with his lust for power and insane, in Thoughts in Freefall, he posits that “If I fall forever, I will never hit the ground”. He thinks himself invincible and needs little provocation to demonstrate that fact. “I am immune to gravity”.
Naturally, he is about to make contact with the consequences of his actions.
Features an absolute dickripper of a guitar solo by Dave Davidson of Revocation.
12. The River
The “find out’ in Thoughts in Freefall’s “fuck around”.
Where previously he said, “If I fall forever”, we begin with “I fell forever”.
He loses everything, including The Catalyst, those who believed in him. He
Generally, I’m not a fan of ballads. The River started life as a suggestion from Mazen that we include a ballad of some kind on the album, which I initially resisted. But I realized that I didn’t have to write a Diane Warren-type ballad, or something corny, and that the moment called for something stripped down. So Alex and I sat down with a very vague concept of what we needed to achieve, and came up with what I consider to be a very powerful and understated moment on the album. It’s almost entirely just piano and one vocal, whereas I tend towards maximalism in my writing, with layers and layers of orchestration, synths, and vocal harmonies. It’s a bare naked moment for both Sisyphus and I, where he is broken by his own hand, once again at the bottom of the mountain, having pushed the rock all the way to the top, only to fall to the bottom again.
Literal rock bottom.
13. Tempus Fugue
“Tempus fugit” is a saying that means “time flies”, and a fugue is a musical form. On past In Virtue albums, I have included long-winded overtures of the album’s musical themes (“Underture” and “Afterture” ) that were both ill-conceived and poorly received, self-indulgent. On this album, I wanted the chance to make a meaningful tour de force of the motifs while wrapping up the story and tying it all together. This is the longest song on the album, and covers a lot of ground.
In this song, Sisyphus addresses the futility of time and its cyclical nature, to which he has had the most painfully vivid relationship. He also recognizes the healing power of time, to which we owe his entire redemption cycle, in fact.
He finally comes to an important conclusion about life on earth, and the value of true intention and effort – the work of life. Pushing the rock is something we all do, every day – we wake up and we try. We all have our own boulder and our own hill, and even in the apparent futility of time, we create something meaningful and beautiful from our struggles to ascend to something higher and better than ourselves.
And that we need to forgive ourselves, so we can push the rock again tomorrow.
We once again reprise the “Push that rock back up that hill” mantra.
Features a devastating vocal spot by Chaney Crabb of Entheos.
14. Descent Limitless
The outro of the album, with the triumphant motif from the intro once again, in its final form, as Sisyphus takes up his boulder, but with new meaning and understanding this time. We hear “The Sound’ one last time as the album wraps.
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FUN FACTS – STORY ANGLES:
1. The band is fronted by Trey Xavier, who you may know from his YouTube channel or the website Gear Gods. He’s also the singer on the viral (2 million views) YouTuber collab song “Dread Machine” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kJfraNCvR8s)
2. 3 of the band members (Alex, Jamie, and Rami) are software developers.
3. Trey has a music degree in composition and teaches several online courses on songwriting and composition.
4. The album took 6 years from when we started tracking it to get done because our producer ghosted us with like 10% left to finish. We thought he was dead or something. Just straight up vanished. I sent him hundreds of texts and online messages with no reply. I had to re-track many of my vocal parts in my home studio to get it done.
5. The band has only played live once with the current lineup.
6. During the recording of the album, I got so mad at the drummer/producer that I lifted my laptop over my head and smashed it on the floor of the studio and kicked a chair, which is VERY out of character for me (we made up and it’s all good now).
L-R Bruno Valverde (drums), Jamie Hush (bass), Trey Xavier (guitar/vocals), Alex Nasla (keys), Rami Khalaf (guitar)
Phot Credit: Felix Martin
Los Angeles, California’s In Virtue is a band forging a new path, abandoning outdated conceptions of what heavy music is to redefine metal for a new era. Although In Virtue was initially formed in 2004 in California’s Bay Area, the band’s rebirth in 2015 is where the real story begins.
That’s when founding guitarist Trey Xavier made the difficult decision to take over lead vocals, move south to LA, and start the band over with a new lineup. This was the catalyst they needed, and the band’s final form took shape. Adding keyboardist Alex Nasla (The Mourning, ex-Witherfall), guitarist Rami Khalaf, and bassist Jamie Hush, their new sound was freed.
“I was tired of other people singing what I was writing,” says Trey (who you may know from his popular YouTube channel). “We had some pretty good singers, but it always felt like a compromise. It was pretty scary – I was 28 and I had never seriously sung before. But all the work I put in paid off, because now I can create my music as I envision it.”
And what a vision it has become – the band’s forthcoming album Age of Legends, due out in 2025, tells a haunting tale of Sisyphean struggle and redemption through a modern lens. This new era of In Virtue brought their first new music, 2019’s single “Purgatory”, which gave the world a brand new sound. Combining elements of power metal, groove, progressive metal, and pop, but somehow sounding like none of the above, “Purgatory” defined the sonic future of the band.
The singles “Where The Edges Meet” and “Scream” followed soon after to expand on the story, each moving the story forward and bringing new life to the characters and their pain.
With way more to come on Age of Legends, In Virtue is looking forward to the next chapter and bringing their story to the world.
Discography:
2025 – Age of Legends
2012 – Embrace the Horror
2008 – Delusions of Grandeur
Artist Endorsements: Kiesel Guitars, Revv Amps, Sennheiser Wireless
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