10 Years and Mascot Records have announced an October 11 street date for the band’s digital EP titled INNER DARKNESS. They have also revealed the lead single 10 Years (feat. Conquer Divide), “The Optimist” to accompany the announcement. Watch the video HERE.
In addition to featuring three previously unreleased songs and three well-received singles, the Inner Darkness EP includes a version of the hit “The Optimist” with guest vocals by Conquer Divide’s Kia Taylor, who skillfully trades off lines with 10 Years singer Jesse Hasek.
The chemistry between the two singers and the bands more broadly was there from the start. When they first met on a Zoom, guitarist and producer Brian Vodinh recalls, “We talked about touring and recording and basically nerded out and hit it off really well. Then, we mentioned the idea of a collaboration, which is where everything started.” Hasek adds, “We thought it would be fun to give it a new twist since it has been out there for a while. Kia’s name came up and I’ve always enjoyed female vocalists and I thought it would be especially cool to inject her voice into our style of music. She had the right vibe and a great attitude and she really went for it. It was a fun, painless process and it came out even better than I expected it to.”
The complete EP track listing includes “The Optimist” (feat. Conquer Divide), “Gravity,” “Rise,” “Speechless,” “I Remember,” “The Trench,” and “The Optimist.” While 10 Years will continue to tour through the end of the year and into 2025, the band has no intention of waiting another four years before releasing the follow-up to Inner Darkness. In fact, there are more than a dozen nearly finished songs waiting for Vodinh in his home studio. With no strict deadline and no studio bills to pay, Vodinh constructed frameworks for about 70 songs over the past two years. The greatest challenge was deciding which six would make the cut for Inner Darkness.
“There was such a massive catalog of built-up material we went through – great demos that have everything on them except the vocals — that it was really hard to come up with the right songs that flowed together in the right way,” Vodinh says. “There are a dozen other songs that are really strong and just need to be finished up, and we kept going back and forth, bouncing from one song to another for all eternity to try to figure out what to use. In the end, we used the ones Jesse felt the best about vocally, but there’s plenty of great stuff left to work with.” A full-length studio album is planned for release in 2025.
The band 10 Years has enriched the musical lives of a global fan base for over a quarter century. And as they approach the release of their 10 th studio album, they celebrate the milestone of surpassing a quarter billion cumulative streams across all platforms. Their repertoire continues to connect, while also being discovered by a new audience of many who were just being born when this career began. 10 Years is Jesse Hasek (Lead Vocals), Brian Vodinh (Guitar, Backing Vocals), Matt Wantland (Guitar), Chad Grennor (Bass) and Luke Narey (Drums).
10 Years released three new singles between late 2022 and early 2024 – “The Optimist,” “I Remember,” and “Rise” – and earned more than 27 million streams for their efforts (“The Optimist” alone garnering 16.5 million plays).
The new repertoire is driven by the inspiration of introspection, aggression, and isolation. Singer Jesse Hasek shares, “I’ve always used music as a tool to express my inner feelings, and I can get dark, especially considering our last album came out right before the pandemic, and then the entire world shut down and everyone was stuck. But I think it’s healthy and to dig deep within to release those feelings of negativity instead of holding onto them. It’s like working out. When you work out, you get sore, but then you get stronger. There’s a soreness and pain that comes from digging into this stuff, but nothing feels better than coming out on the other side.”
Since forming in 1999, 10 Years have quietly pushed themselves and modern rock towards evolution. Building a formidable catalog, the group’s gold-selling 2005 breakthrough The Autumn Effect yielded the hit “Wasteland,” which went gold, infiltrated the Billboard Hot 100, and clinched #1 at Active Rock Radio and #1 on the Billboard Alternative Songs Chart. They landed three Top 30 entries on the Billboard Top 200 with Division [2008], Feeding the Wolves [2010], and Minus the Machine [2012]. In 2017’s (how to live) As Ghosts marked a reunion between Jesse, Brian, and Matt and achieved marked success. Not only did the album bow in the Top 5 of the US Top Hard Rock Albums Chart, but it also yielded the hit “Novacaine.” The single ascended to the Top 5 of the Billboard US Mainstream Rock Songs Chart and has now tallied over 45 million streams, across all DSPs. The cumulative total for all track streams from repertoire on how to live (As Ghosts) exceeds 74 million plays. Along the way, they sold out countless headline shows and toured with everyone from Korn, Three Days Grace. Deftones, and Stone Sour to Chris Cornell and Linkin Park. The band’s most recent studio album is titled Violent Allies, and was recorded with GRAMMY® Award-winning producer Howard Benson [My Chemical Romance, Halestorm, Papa Roach]. The record has amassed over 50 million streams.
