Las Vegas acts shine on new releases

Heartache, hip-hop and heavy metal headline the latest roundup of Vegas music releases:

MYNAS, "The Architect" (mynasband.com): Heavy metal has become as subdivided as the Periodic Table of Elements, with just as many inert gases.

Question: Whatever happened to straight-up, no-frills metal minus all those "post" prefixes and "core" suffixes?

Answer: Mynas.

What are they building with "The Architect"?

A bulwark of well-executed metal that eschews scene conceits in favor of an emphasis on the fundamentals. Ferocious, yet catchy, with excellent twin guitar work and the kind of gruff melody that highlighted the best '80s thrash, Mynas invigorate metal's familiar thematic tropes of war and betrayal. "Creation is nothing," singer/rhythm guitarist Miles Lanham snarls at one point, because clearly, destruction is everything.

DREAMING OF LIONS, "Change Is a Drunk" (http://dreamingoflions.band camp.com): A breakup album as intimate and candid as "Change Is a Drunk" can be as uncomfortable to experience as the sight of the departing lover who inspired it.

It almost feels like picking the lock to someone's diary.

"I got a lot of songs that I started to keep from crying," singer/guitarist Chris LeLand confesses on the aptly titled "Talking About Getting the Blues." "It didn't work." Maybe not, but LeLand dries his tears with bar napkins and shares these emotionally raw acoustic tunes, haunted by harmonica and loneliness. By the end of the album, LeLand finds a measure of resolution. He doesn't give in to temptation, as the abrupt change that opened these wounds eventually begins to heal them.

MIC BRIM, "Beginning of the End" (getrightmusic.com): Mic Brim's debut mixtape is like a kettle set to boil: It takes awhile to build steam, but once it does, around track nine, it's scalding.

The cut in question, "Kill Switch," is a triumphant-sounding one, with Brim working himself into a lather over a stirring, soulful backing track. The momentum builds from there, like a boulder tearing down a cliff, with Brim sounding downright breathless on the next track, "Death Taxes."

"This has to happen," he implores over a deliberate beat, which grows faster and more insistent, backed by ricocheting keys that sound like sonar pings on "Straight to the Bank."

A blue-collar MC, Brim sounds equally desperate and determined here.

"I'm nowhere near where I'm supposed to be," he announces on "Dynasty," but unlike his resolve, that probably won't last long.

Contact reporter Jason Bracelin at jbracelin@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0476.