Track listing: Breathless, Empire State, Blue, Numb

Released: 1997
Best track: probably "Breathless"
Track to skip: "Blue"
Rating: 69 out of 100

Megalo was a band who existed for quite a few years in and around Austin, Texas. For most of the 90’s they played their brand of alterna-pop picking up quite a few fans along the way. At the time of this recording the band consisted of Eric Hsu on guitar & vocals, Wiley Koepp on drums, Alex Lucas on vocals and guitar, Bryan Rubio on guitar & vocals & Darren Strunk on bass. I was pretty good friends with these guys as we shared Wiley as a drummer (Megalo was his ‘other’ band while he played in Echo Juliet and 3 Penny Opera). I still don’t think these were the band’s four best songs at the time, but it’s what they chose to record. I’m not sure if this was recorded in the basement of the UT communications building, but I *think* it was. If so, I think this may be the best quality product that ever came out of there! I sure as hell know none of the stuff I recorded down there (including Megalo’s 2nd demo) sounded this good. So yeah, pretty good quality for a demo.

These are all Alex’s songs I believe, thus he’s the only one doing lead vocals. There are some occasional out of tune singing bits (like on "Empire State") which definitely give this a demo quality. I don’t think "Blue" is that great of a song and truthfully I don’t even remember it. I saw Megalo hundreds of times live and this demo is nothing compared to how they were live. True they weren’t the greatest band ever, but I really liked their songs and always had a good time at the shows. And regardless who played drums for them, I’d still think they were a cool band. This demo is decent however. Nothing too spectacular.