“Sometimes things happen for reasons that are beyond us.” That’s what Of Mice & Men lead vocalist Aaron Pauley says when asked about the title of the California metalcore band’s ninth album. “We have the notion that miracles are a once-in-a-lifetime thing, but the whole idea of another miracle implies that there already is one and you have to look for it.” On Another Miracle, Pauley and his bandmates—drummer Valentino “Tino” Arteaga, guitarist Phil Manansala, and guitarist Alan Ashby—took the opportunity to pursue new sonic territories, most notably the heavy ’90s shoegaze vibe of “Wake Up.” “We really don’t know what we’re going to make before we make it,” Pauley says. “We just set out on these random little expeditions and follow what excites us, which leads us in all different directions. But for us on our ninth record, we felt like we had a little more freedom to explore.” The one thing that didn’t change is Of Mice & Men’s full control of the production process. The album was engineered and produced by all four members, with Pauley handling the mix and master—just as they did for 2021’s Echo and 2023’s Tether. “We’d already set the precedent that we were capable of doing it ourselves,” he says. “And because we really enjoy it, we’re able to be as prolific as we want to be. We’re not bound by studio time and producer schedules and things like that. When you can’t sleep at 2:30 am, you can just fire up the computer and work on the album.” Below, he comments on each track. “A Waltz” “We picked this for the first track because it has what I guess you’d call a ‘wow factor’ out of the gate. The song is incredibly theatrical. It lived as an instrumental for a long time because it’s one of the most track-dense and sound-dense songs on the record. Lyrically, I think that one, in the zeitgeist, was probably the result of a bad news day or just one of those days when I was feeling misanthropic and hopeless, which is sort of a go-to topic in rock and metal. But I like the counting and the repetition that happens naturally here. If you allow yourself to sink into the song a bit, it will kind of hypnotize you. And that’s by design.” “Troubled Water” “This one is about one-sided relationships and the idea of not wasting your energy and materials building bridges that go nowhere over waters that you don’t really want to fall into if for some reason that bridge fails. It’s all proverbial, of course. Imagine if it was literal, like it’s about structural engineering. I think if you want to remain effective in your life, just as a human being who can affect the shared reality, you really have to guard your resources and your energies. There’s a lot of tension in the instrumental, which kind of told us what the song should be about. It just felt like it was talking about a struggle or a conflict.” “Safe & Sound” “I wrote that one for my daughter when my wife and I found out that we were going to be first-time parents. I kept having this daydream or recurring vision, wondering what it’s like for a soul coming down to Earth, coming from something that’s infinite to something that’s so small and fragile. The idea of keeping your child safe and sound—you can’t really make that promise, as much as you want to. The song is about acknowledging that. Even though the lyric is ‘I promise you’ll be safe and sound,’ it’s acknowledging that we’re powerless in a lot of ways. I think recognizing that is not a bad thing, as long as you don’t let it steal your joy.” “Hourglass” “Instrumentally, this is like a tornado of fire. It’s unrelenting and seems to have this twirling, spinning quality about it. In my mind, I just kept seeing an hourglass, with the sand swirling down. It’s playing off the idea that the bigger your mountain gets, the more you realize it’s built out of sand. This was one of the songs I wrote before I found out I was going to be a dad, so at the time, I was just a 36-year-old metal musician on a ninth record feeling a little burnt out and just a little unsure of what my place in the world was. We used to call that a midlife crisis and people used to buy Corvettes, but not in this economy. So, the song is really about wanting to find purpose.” “Wake Up” “It started off as an instrumental loop that our drummer Tino came up with, where he did all the acoustic guitars and everything. It was just this super powerful ’90s alt-rock shoegaze thing, like you’ve just transformed into an eagle and you’re soaring over the Grand Canyon. It feels very dreamlike. Lyrically, it’s about being present and practicing your awareness, which sounds like some esoteric hippie bullshit, but you can actually do it, and it can actually improve your life. It’s not pseudoscience. All we have is now; the past is gone; the future is inaccessible. So just be here and smell the roses a little bit.” “Flowers” “This one is really heavy, but it has this sort of tender quality to it. Lyrically, the song is about the things in your life that you could call a storm inside of you—it’s different for everybody—and understanding that while that never goes away, you can use the rain from the storm to feed the flowers. Personally, I suffer from a major depressive disorder, anxiety, and just being neurotic and offbeat and weird, like a lot of musicians are. But the things that make me sad are often the inspiration for the songs, which can then make other people less sad, which then makes me feel less sad.” “Another Miracle” “This one’s definitely a both-hands-up-to-the-sky, pleading-to-the-universe kind of song. If you can just dole out miracles, what’s another miracle? Can I get another one? If you’ve got a hundred dollars, what’s a dollar? I think everyone has moments in life when they either speak to a higher power or, if you don’t believe in that yourself, you can still ask for a miracle. Hopelessness is a last resort. This is a plea to not end up that way.” “Contact” “This is your quintessential UAP disclosure song. We’re in an era now where they’ve been having congressional meetings about it. I’ve been a science fiction fan since I was born, and probably before that in a past life. When we were working on the record, there was just so much exciting stuff happening all at once in this field. Now it’s kind of slowed down, but for a minute there it was super saturated. And this song is just the idea of ‘take me with you,’ written from the perspective of somebody who’s maybe a little bit too far gone. That’s always kind of fun.” “Parable” “I would say this is in the same vein as ‘Another Miracle.’ It’s when you’re having one of those moments when you sort of disassociate from your life when your circumstances get either bad or just so far removed from what you think you want, and you’re like, ‘Holy shit, am I in a play right now? Is this some sort of Shakespearean tragedy that’s meant to teach a major life lesson?’ I think sometimes we all feel like we’re in The Truman Show, where we think, ‘Surely this is some kind of manual for what happens if you make the wrong decisions.’ You’re learning what not to do.” “Somewhere in Between” “This one is about not knowing how you feel, which, I think, is just as devastating as knowing that you feel bad. I think sometimes uncertainty and unknowing and feeling like you're in between two feelings is sort of like not being on one island or the other when the rescue plane comes. You’re somewhere in the water, and you’re gonna get left behind.” “Swallow” “This one’s probably the most feel-bad song. It’s the idea of feeling disconnected from yourself and how what society pushes on us as we get older is mostly self-destructive. Like the remedy for feeling disconnected is to do things that would cause more disconnection, just for the sake of selling you something. And the three things society will sell you are transience, decadence, or dissidence—which are all things that just lead to more emptiness. The song is saying, ‘Pick your poison and swallow it.’” “Infinite” “It’s funny—this was one of the first songs we wrote, at least instrumentally, and it ended up as the last song on the album. It just felt like a capstone in the same way that ‘A Waltz’ felt like a good opener. They both feel like bookends. Lyrically, it’s about the idea of trying to connect more with our consciousness rather than just our bodies or just this limited reality, because our minds are really, really powerful. They're the source of a lot of our joy but also of a lot of our suffering, so be mindful.”