From Autumn to Ashes, Haste the Day, Maylene & The Sons of Disaster, The Sleeping, Twelve Gauge Valentine and Alesana
The Irving Theater
Saturday, March 10, 6 p.m., $15, all-ages

In December, From Autumn to Ashes announced that its lead singer/screamer Ben Perri had left the group. The reaction from fans was immediate, considering the band had been busy finishing a new CD, Holding a Wolf by the Ears.

“It was kind of funny, like everyone sent in their condolences, like something horrible had happened [when Ben left],” says bassist Josh Newton. “Like you’d look onto MySpace.com and everyone was like, ‘Oh, I’m so sorry.’ It was odd to write them all back saying we’re not [broken up].”

Fans, actually, couldn’t be blamed for assuming the worst. Although the band members did their best to put the best face on events, there had been signs of trouble for two years.

In summer 2005, From Autumn to Ashes dropped off of the Sounds of the Underground tour, saying the band members needed a hiatus to re-connect with the reasons they made music. This break was widely seen as a signal that the Long Island-based group was breaking up.

Instead, From Autumn to Ashes re-emerged to play last summer’s Warped tour, but then came word of Perri’s departure.

Rather than being a deathblow, Mark Perri took over both the screaming and singing and, with Newton and guitarist Brian Deneeve, bashed out Holding a Wolf by the Ear as a trio.

The new CD, which is due for release April 10, marks a shift back toward the harsher sounds of the group’s 2003 sophomore album, The Fiction We Live, after a bigger emphasis on more melodic rock on 2005’s Abandon Your Friends.

Newton says Perri’s departure barely disrupted plans for the new CD — even though he quit just one week before recording was to begin.

“I would say at most there was like an hour of panic, like ‘Oh my God, what are we going to do?” he says. “Then it was like no, this is cool. We’re fine. Don’t worry about it. We had been living with these demos [with Mark doing vocals] for two weeks already. We were used to hearing the songs that way.”