The Appleseed Cast

When the members of the Appleseed Cast made their first appearance in Denver in the late ’90s — they played the Market Street Lounge, a club that was attached to the Old Chicago in LoDo — they were fresh-faced young men from Lawrence, Kansas, playing a serviceable brand of emo. At the time, that sound had been pretty well trod by bands like Sunny Day Real Estate — an early inspiration for the act, whose original handle was December’s Tragic Drive. Over the course of eight albums, led ably by frontman Christopher Crisci and guitarist Aaron Pillar, the Appleseed Cast has steadily grown into a band of progressive post-rock auteurs. There’s a good amount of gray in Crisci’s beard these days, but like his group, he’s aged quite admirably, as evidenced by Illumination Ritual, the Appleseed Cast’s latest release.