After six years in a band that imploded before it ever crawled out of cult status, former Movielife singer Vinnie Caruana is happy to be in a project with relatively little discord. His new group, I Am the Avalanche, released its self-titled debut album last fall, and Caruana says he’s finally found some peace. “The overall aura of the [new] band is completely different,” he says. “Movielife had a severe identity crisis, which pretty much drove us into extinction.”

But Caruana doesn’t regret the half-dozen years he spent fronting the Long Island proto-emo band. “I’m all grown up now,” he says. “I’ve got a better head on my shoulders. I know what to do and how to do it now.” With Avalanche, Caruana found a release for all of the tension that had built up over the years. The album is a guitar-heavy, emo-leaning work centered on that catharsis. “I just needed to do my thing my way,” says Caruana.

Appropriately, I Am the Avalanche started as a solo project. It was only after it got rolling that Caruana realized that his new music was best suited to a full band. “It’s not that singer-songwriter music isn’t sincere,” he says. “But I do this so I can let off energy onstage. We’re a rock band.”
Tue., March 7, 6:30 p.m.

This article appears in Mar 1-7, 2006.