There is a particular kind of heaviness that comes from Vermont. It is not the heaviness usually associated with metal, the industrial decay of the Rust Belt, the claustrophobia of a sprawling city, or the sun-scorched aggression of some distant scene. Vermont's version is colder and more isolated. Long winters. Dark roads. Small towns separated by miles of forest. For Saving Vice, that landscape has become an unlikely launching point for a band determined to prove that serious American metalcore can emerge from well beyond the genre's traditional centers.
Saving Vice is an independent Vermont metalcore band built around vocalist Tyler Small, guitarist Robbie Litchfield, bassist Alex Chan, and drummer Sam Whelton. Since emerging in 2017, the group has expanded far beyond its New England beginnings, mounting national headlining runs, appearing at festivals, and developing the kind of following that independent heavy bands rarely acquire without the machinery of a major label behind them.
What makes Saving Vice interesting, however, is not simply that they have managed to travel beyond Vermont. It is that they have taken something recognizable the emotional volatility, breakdowns, melodic hooks, and dramatic dynamics of late-2000s metalcore and refused to treat it as a museum piece.
There are ghosts of an earlier metalcore era in Saving Vice's music, but nostalgia is only part of the equation. The band describes its sound as combining the spirit of classic "09 metalcore" with contemporary approaches to the genre, and that tension between past and present has become one of its defining characteristics. Saving Vice can move from melody to outright violence with remarkable speed. Choruses arrive with enough space to breathe before guitars and drums collapse that space again. Clean passages do not soften the music so much as make the next impact feel larger.
The story begins in Vermont's heavy-music scene. Robbie Litchfield assembled the early version of Saving Vice while in college, with Tyler Small eventually joining after spending years immersed in Vermont metalcore and hardcore. Small has described encountering significant gatekeeping while trying to establish himself in the local scene. This experience ultimately sent him west before he returned to Vermont and found his place in Saving Vice. That history matters because the band's identity has always carried an undercurrent of persistence. Saving Vice does not sound like a group waiting for somebody to permit it.
The first major statement arrived with Colder Than Dark in 2018. The EP introduced listeners to a band already comfortable operating between melody and aggression, with songs such as "Hell Here," "Run to You," and "Black Ice" helping establish the foundation of the Saving Vice sound. "Hell Here," in particular, became one of the songs most closely associated with the group, surviving as a fixture as Saving Vice continued evolving beyond its earliest material.
Then came Hello There in 2020, the band's debut full-length album. It was the kind of record that made Saving Vice difficult to dismiss as simply another regional metalcore act. The scale felt larger. The songwriting was more confident. Songs including "Hollow Bastion," "Endgame," "Never Knows Best," "Nerve Damage," and "Before I Go" showed a band learning how to balance immediacy with atmosphere without surrendering the impact expected from heavy music.
That balance has become central to Saving Vice. Brutality alone is easy to understand. Melody alone is easy to understand. Saving Vice is most compelling when the two are fighting for control of the same song.
The band's lyrics give that collision weight. Addiction, loss, heartbreak, anxiety, sacrifice, and the darker corners of personal experience repeatedly surface in Saving Vice's work. These are not subjects being used merely to decorate heavy songs. They provide the emotional architecture underneath them. When the music turns violent, there is usually a reason. When it becomes melodic, the melody frequently feels less like relief than reflection.
By 2024, Saving Vice was ready for another substantial step forward. Good Days, Dead Eyes, the band's sophomore album, arrived as the work of musicians who had accumulated years of touring, setbacks, personal experiences, and independent-band realities since Hello There. The record pushed the band's established contrasts further, retaining the hooks and aggression that had defined Saving Vice while giving its darker instincts more room.
Independence is an important part of this story. Saving Vice has spent years navigating an industry in which touring can collapse, opportunities disappear, finances become unforgiving, and momentum can vanish almost overnight. The band has nevertheless continued to operate independently, absorbing the business responsibilities that increasingly accompany modern musicianship. In that sense, Saving Vice represents something larger happening across contemporary music: artists are no longer simply writing songs and waiting to be discovered. They are building organizations around their art.
And Saving Vice keeps building.
The period following Good Days, Dead Eyes has not been quiet. The band's catalog continued expanding through releases including "Year of the Snake," "Trauma Souba," "Full Send," and "Straw Dogs" in 2025, followed by "The Shadow" and a remix of the track in 2026. Nearly a decade after the band's emergence, Saving Vice is still behaving like a group with something left to prove.
That may be the most Vermont thing about them.
There is no obvious shortcut from this state to the national heavy-music circuit. Vermont does not offer the enormous population base of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, or Philadelphia. A band starting here has to create momentum differently. Every long drive matters. Every room matters. Every listener matters. Geography forces commitment.
Saving Vice has turned that disadvantage into part of its identity.
The band's mantra, "Eyes Up," captures the mentality. Small has described it as keeping your head up and maintaining focus on the objective ahead. It is an uncomplicated phrase, but after years of touring, lineup evolution, independent releases, industry uncertainty, and the ordinary punishment of trying to make original music professionally, it carries considerably more weight.
For Vermont listeners, Saving Vice represents something worth recognizing. The state's musical identity has never belonged to one genre, one generation, or one sound. Vermont can produce folk musicians and singer-songwriters. It can produce jam bands, punk bands, electronic artists, experimental musicians, and it can produce metalcore capable of standing on stages far beyond the Green Mountains.
Saving Vice belongs to that larger Vermont story.
At Maple City Music, that is precisely why we believe Vermont artists deserve serious attention. The Maple City Journal's Vermont Artist Spotlight is not about treating local musicians as curiosities simply because they happen to come from our state. It is about recognizing artists whose work can stand on its own regardless of geography.
Saving Vice has earned that distinction.
They are heavy without being one-dimensional, melodic without becoming comfortable, nostalgic without living in the past, and unmistakably ambitious without abandoning the independent identity that brought them this far. Nearly a decade into the journey, Saving Vice still sounds hungry; their newest single, "The Shadow," has hit the shop playlist and will stay there for the foreseeable future.
From Vermont to stages across the country, the message remains remarkably consistent.
Eyes up.
There is more ahead.