A lot can change in a few years, and for Breaking In A Sequence that time has clearly been spent sharpening identity, chemistry, and purpose.
When I last caught up with Rich Nguyen and Joe Taback back around the Defy The Algorithm era, the conversation was rooted in early momentum, creative chemistry, and a band still carving out exactly what it wanted to be. Even then, there was already a sense that Breaking In A Sequence were not interested in standing still. The music had started life with more of a hard rock foundation, but the band’s natural instinct kept pulling it toward something heavier, more dynamic, and more emotionally charged.
Now, catching up again with Rich as the latest single Meant To Be makes its way into the world, that sense of evolution feels even stronger. This is not a band trying to reintroduce itself for the sake of it. It feels more like a band finally getting the chance to open the door on work that has been sitting there, waiting for the right moment to breathe.
Rich was open about the frustration of that wait. The record has been finished for around a year, and like so many artists caught between readiness and rollout, Breaking In A Sequence have had to sit with completed material while the machinery around release schedules and label timing played its part. For a songwriter, that sort of pause can be brutal. When the music is there and you believe in it, the instinct is always to throw it into the world immediately. Rich knows that urge well, but he also knows what happens if music is released without the right push behind it. It disappears.
That tension sits underneath this current chapter. There is excitement because the band are finally moving again, but there is also a sense of pent-up creative energy behind it all. Rich made it clear that he is not somebody content to sit still. He wants to keep writing, keep creating, and keep building. Meant To Be is the first real sign that the next phase is alive.
What makes this return interesting is that Rich does not frame Meant To Be as the definitive statement of the record. Instead, he sees it as a strong representation of where the band is heading without pretending it tells the whole story. He described it as different from what Breaking In A Sequence have released before, and the way he spoke about the song suggested a band leaning more confidently into its wider range of influences rather than forcing itself into one lane.
That wider range comes through in the way Rich talks about the band’s growth. Back in the earlier material, he had already spoken about the music naturally getting heavier rather than that direction being mapped out in advance. This time around, he describes a band that is not only heavier, but heavier in different ways. There is more shape to it now. More room for melody. More room for depth. More willingness to move away from anything too neat or too expected.
A huge part of that growth comes back to chemistry. Rich spoke at length about what BC Vaught brought into the fold, and not just as a drummer with pedigree. The difference now is the time that has been spent learning each other. When BC first came in, there was a feeling-out process. Years later, that understanding has settled into something far more instinctive. Rich even pointed to the way BC accents his vocal phrasing as one of the things he loves most in the current writing dynamic. That sort of detail says a lot. It is not just about having a great drummer in the band. It is about having the right drummer for how these songs breathe.
That same feeling runs through Rich’s description of the songwriting process. Breaking In A Sequence do not work in a clean, linear way. The band jam together, Rich takes recordings away, strips out what does not feel right, reshapes arrangements, builds melodies and lyrics over the top, then sends the songs back to be rebuilt again around those ideas. It is a process that sounds chaotic on paper but cohesive in practice. More importantly, it sounds human. Rich was blunt about how much modern music loses when everything is programmed, gridded, and flattened out. For Breaking In A Sequence, the point is the push and pull. The feel. The imperfections that make a song live.
That also feeds directly into how Rich writes. He does not begin with some rigid lyrical blueprint. He lets the arrangement speak first. Melody, aggression, and phrasing come instinctively once the structure feels right, and only then do the lyrics start to take full shape. In the case of Meant To Be, that emotional centre came from a feeling of hopelessness. Not melodrama for the sake of it, but the very real emotional weight of working hard toward something and still not quite getting there. Rich takes that personal feeling and pushes it outward until it becomes something listeners can recognise in themselves.
That theme makes the upcoming album title Inanimate all the more interesting. Rich described it as symbolic of what the band has been for the past four years, inactive, unmoving, almost suspended. At the same time, he sees the title as a contrast to the music itself, because what the band have created does not sound lifeless at all. It sounds raw. Alive. Ready to hit.
There is another important thread running through all of this too, and that is producer Chris Collier. Rich has known Collier since childhood, started his first band with him, and has worked with him across years of projects. That history matters. When Rich talks about Collier, he talks about trust. About somebody who knows what he can do, what he cannot do, and when to push him further. That kind of relationship is worth its weight in gold when a band is trying to level up rather than simply repeat itself.
And that is really what this feels like now. Not a reset. Not a nostalgia play. Not a band just trying to get moving again for the sake of visibility. Breaking In A Sequence sound like a band that have spent years absorbing frustration, refining chemistry, and learning how to make those experiences count inside the songs.
If Meant To Be is the opening move, then Inanimate feels like it could be the record where everything clicks fully into place. Rich hinted that the last song written for the album may even point toward the band’s future, with more progressive structure, more melodic exploration, and less of the old cookie-cutter thinking. That should be enough to get people interested.
For now, though, Meant To Be does exactly what it needs to do. It reminds people that Breaking In A Sequence are still here, still evolving, and still carrying far more depth than a simple comeback tag could ever capture.
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