By Darcie Roy
Photos courtesy of Rise Records
Eidola, formed by Utah County natives Andrew Wells, Matthew Dommer, and Matthew Hansen, rose to success as an experimental post-hardcore band despite limited support in Provo’s overwhelmingly indie-pop scene.
Signed to Blue Swan Records in 2014 (now a subsidiary of Rise Records) the band — which also includes guitarists Sergio Medina and Skylar Caporicci, and bassist Reese Ortenberg —has toured globally and performed to crowds of thousands and recently released their sixth full-length album, Mend. To them, a thriving music community is built on music that fosters connections and shared experiences. As such, Eidola delivers with a blend of innovation and emotion that resonates deeply with others.
What it Means to Be Alone
In their formative years, Eidola performed locally at small venues, backyard BBQs, and high school radio stations, as playing to the fringes was all the scene would allow then. “Utah had such an opportunity to build a really cool rock scene back in 2012,” says Wells, “I truly believed that then. I believe it now. If those bands had worked together to be creative … and collaborate more, it would have been much better and healthier.”
“I think Utah would have been put on the map for a lot of reasons because there’s so much talent here, but they all left to be successful elsewhere. All of them. [Neon Trees’] Tyler Glenn, [Imagine Dragons’] Dan Reynolds, all these guys,” he recalls. “There was such a cool seed! You’d have these guys that come in and Tyler Glenn tweeting, ‘Oh, man, this Eidola band is crazy at Muse Music! This guy’s hanging upside down on the damn rafters.’ That’s cool! That guy knows what community is about.”
Blood In The Water
The struggle to find genuine support extends beyond genre inclusivity in the local scene — big label, small label, no label. Between growing Eidola from scratch and joining post-hardcore institution Dance Gavin Dance, Wells has observed an absence of connection within the industry at large.
He’s concerned that label monopolies prioritize profitability over quality, shaping the music available to the public. For example, corporate consolidation (Live Nation, AEG) shuttered hundreds of small venues, limiting opportunities for local acts to grow and be discovered. In an already highly competitive industry, that scarcity breeds resentment, distrust, and backbiting between bands.
“I’ve seen this pretty much everywhere I’ve gone in the world. It’s not even country-specific. I just haven’t seen thriving communities of multiple bands, like multiple artists or even multiple genres, lifting each other up. It’s generally crabs in a barrel, struggling to sell a hundred tickets, tearing each other down any chance they get. If anyone gets a modicum of success, they just get torn down.”
He continues, “If you intend to build and foster a strong community, you should focus on lifting people up rather than tearing them down. That’s the core principle of things, you should be focused on collaboration, participation, and elevation.”
Renaissance
As one would expect, Eidola’s sound has evolved over 13 years, but this evolution was also by design; the latest album, Mend, is the final installment in a six-album narrative that seeks to connect with listeners through the shared human experience.
“The overarching concept of Eidola focuses on a theological, historical, psychological narrative that spans our entire discography,” says Wells. “Essentially, it starts with a man’s spiritual journey, wrestling with God and faith, and it dives into the dichotomies of the theologies of many religions. That’s the intention behind Eidola. It’s to span the human condition and explore it in a way applicable to those of us existing in modernity in the current century.”
For those interested in delving deeper into the lore, check out this Warped Taste Podcast episode where he drills it down. There is also a graphic novel on the horizon that will deliver a visual interpretation.
“The goal is to get you to morally question what objective good means and where moral duties and values even come from. And if you can define that, I think you can find kind of the crux of what the band hinges on.”
Mend released last Friday, January 17, 2025 — less than a year since its double album counterweight, Eviscerate. “I wanted to explore a diametrically opposed theme in each record. For Eviscerate, I wanted to focus on the themes and the sonic value, how we could focus and lean into death and despair, and times of human history that were focused on war, strife, loss, and grief. My best friend had just died when I was writing this record. I had multiple other friends commit suicide that year. I had multiple family members die. I had experienced tremendous loss in that year. As I was writing, it was very easy for me to channel these emotions into the theme of Eviscerate.
“With Mend, I wanted to go in the complete opposite direction. I wanted to focus on beauty and love and celebration, forgiveness, confidence, bravado, standing up for what you believe in, and finding hope in the darkness.”
“Coming out of a season of pain, I wanted to focus primarily on redemption. Mend … leans towards the light, but it has many moments where it hearkens back to all sorts of eras in Eidola, where there’s blues and funk and post-hardcore and metalcore towards the end.”
He continues, “I think it wraps everything back in a circular fashion to where you can listen to the albums on repeat, and it ties them all together as its own body of work that can have that continuous conversation. Because I think the conversation of humanity is a continuous one. And hopefully, I left it open-ended enough that people can interpret it differently over time.”
Newer fans who are most familiar with Eidola’s recent, heavier music may need a moment to digest the second half of this sonic meal, but long-time listeners can look forward to melodic, bouncy, and groovy compositions reminiscent of the band’s earliest works.
“I think if people are open-minded in their listening, Mend might be their favorite record. Ideally, the two as one. As one whole piece of music, it should give you a very good example of what the band is capable of as artists,” Wells explains.
Wells’s vision of the Eviscerate–Mend double album came at a cost. The label declined to fund the second release upfront, so Wells personally financed it to ensure a quick turnaround. Considering The Architect suffered a four-year delay in its release during Rise Records’ acquisition of Blue Swan, this was a prudent decision.
Four years was a painful wait for even the most patient fans, but as a musician whose creation and career hung in the balance, it was agony. “I had a suicide attempt in 2019 where I ended up in a padded room with nothing. I didn’t even have shoelaces. I had my bible and myself. I remember having a psychiatrist come in and talk to me every day for like, two weeks. We talked about defining your identity. Like, what am I? Am I just an artist? Am I just a singer? Am I just a guitar player for Dance Gavin Dance? Am I just this Eidola guy? Am I solely defined by those things? Or am I a multifaceted human being with hobbies and interests and history?
“There are so many ways to define your reality, your self, your identity. That was a profound moment for me. That’s when I got invested in therapy, really started to take my physical health very seriously, and made a lot of changes in my personal life.”
Restore Me
As Eidola’s music continues to evolve, fans have responded with increasing enthusiasm. “There are these little online communities that form, which are really cool to see. I’m not a social media person, but I get it. When we play shows and we go and we meet people in real-time, that’s the practical, boots-on-the-ground proof to me of the community that’s being built around Eidola as a whole. And you’re seeing different ways that it’s being built, and it’s always super humbling. I’m super grateful to be able to do it for a living for as long as I have, and to share in that camaraderie with other people.”
When it comes to fan engagement in the digital world, Eidola is absolutely crushing it, leveraging high-quality media, personalized content through Laylo, and a fan-driven social media fitness campaign.
“People have been tagging us in all sorts of activities while they’re listening to the music. They’re either doing sports, or they’re lifting weights, or they’re running or hiking. And we share them so that they feel part of that community. For our personal journeys, physical health and mental health are very intertwined,” he says. “It’s rare for your intention and its perception to be aligned almost perfectly. … This is a more unified experience.”
The band has also taken an innovative approach to VIP ticket packages. So innovative, in fact, Wells had to test them on his solo tour before the label approved them for Eidola.
Their last tour offered two enhanced VIP experiences. Eidola’s coffee VIP package included a coffee date with the band and unique items like personalized bags of coffee. “We sat and we drank coffee, we answered questions, and we got to have fun and laugh and take pictures and sign stuff and just have a good time. It was super chill, really laid back. And that’s why it worked.”
The other enhanced VIP experience was a gym session with Wells who is also a certified personal trainer. “We actually get to exercise together. I get to learn about you, and what you like to do and what you don’t like to do,” he shares. “We got to talk about exercise and nutrition, and that was an authentic part of my experience. This is what I’m passionate about outside of music, and people who bought it were also passionate about it. They didn’t just want to meet me, they were interested. I met people from every walk of life you could imagine. Those were super humbling tours. Really, really fun.”
Eidola is among a growing number of national acts offering distinctive, accessible fan engagement. Bands like Bastille and Tegan & Sara provide VIP experiences with intimate Q&As and exclusive pre-show performances, proving that VIP package ideas are limitless when crafted from the heart.
“The objective should be to deliver the coolest, most unique personal experience for what that cost would be. So then there’s a mutual understanding between you and the fan that, ‘Hey, you’re helping me cover the cost of these expenses and I’m delivering you an authentic, memorable experience.’ That’s the goal.”
Revelation
Eidola has wrapped up its conceptual anthology with Mend, but the band’s essence lies in provoking introspection and encouraging discussion about the human condition. With that openness and musical versatility ranging from pop to metal, their future is boundless.
“The intention for me moving forward with Eidola would be to know what the band looks like outside of the narrative. How do we define that as a collective of musicians? Our drummer, Matt (Hansen), lives in Alaska, so we’ve always had this dream of going out to Anchorage and renting a cabin for two months and just seeing what happens. Every time I go in to make a record, I’m pre-producing the whole thing. I’m writing every riff and every lyric and programming all the drums. I have a vision for it, which has gotten us this far. … But I’m intrigued by what the band will sound like if the four of us just get in a room and jam.”
Eidola has made a name for themselves by staying true to their creative vision. This dedication has earned them a loyal fanbase who appreciate the band’s genuine approach to both music and community. Their music creates space for reflection, prompting deeper questions about morality, identity, and connection, and these conversations will continue no matter how their music evolves.
Listen to Mend below, and be sure to follow Eidola on Instagram to stay up to date with the band’s latest community-building efforts.