Finishing up a tight, yet sometimes muddy and loud Amplify!! set inside the Brass Lounge Thursday night, Las Vegans The Opera say their 20 minutes of rock serves a singular purpose for the band: exposure. “You never know what’s going to be hot in this town,” says lead singer Jose Corominas. “Bands here get signed out of nowhere.”
Corominas, bassist Steve Peek and drummer Jameson Bauman are hardly musical newbies. Corominas served a high-school stint in nu-metal band Rich Tradition, while Peek and Bauman paid their punk-rock dues performing in once-popular hardcore outfit December’s End. Now, those groups represent mere stepping stones for the trio of longtime friends, toward their current sound—an eclectic mix of alt-rock that appeals more to bar patrons than kids. “Trends come and go,” Peek summarizes.
Bauman says that, frustrating scene-based judgments about The Opera aside, the musicians rejoice in doing what they love at their many gigs around town. “We’re either not hard enough for the hardcore scene or not pop enough for the all-ages scene,” he explains. “But we’re here to play music and have fun. I don’t think it really gets any better than that.” (myspace.com/theopera)