Depending on who’s counting, there are anywhere from 100 to n-frigging-thousand subgenres of rock music a band can slide into for easy categorization. And depending on where you drop the laser on Fair to Midland’s Universal Republic/Serjical Strike debut album, Fables From a Mayfly: What I Tell You Three Times is True, at least half of those subgenres are being reinvented at once. But to call this Dallas quintet (who, ironically, get their name from an old Texan play on the phrase “fair to middling”) merely eclectic is to sell them way short. No, Fair to Midland are masters of fusing those subgenres into something that’s cohesive, intensely focused, and in a bold new category all its own.

Recorded with art-rock super-producer David Bottrill (Tool, Muse, Peter Gabriel), Fables From a Mayfly finds Fair to Midland stretching out even further into the aggression and atmospherics at their core while taking their inherent gift for melody to new levels. Tracks such as “Kyla Cries Cologne,” “April Fools and Eggmen,” and the gripping first single, “Dance of the Manatee” (which is already climbing the Active Rock and Alternative Radio charts), showcase Fair to Midland’s flair for combining progged-out virtuosity with lead-heavy riffs, dynamic tidal waves, and frontman Darroh Sudderth’s operatic vocals. Even when the volume lets up—as in the softer, spacier folds of “The Wife, The Kids, and the White Picket Fence” and “Say When”—Fair to Midland create sonic tidal waves big enough to level arenas. As the Dallas Morning News described it, "Fair to Midland not only delivers heady, poetic, powerful and often fascinating hard music; they deliver it live with the gumption of a marauding pack of tribal warriors.”

Founded in 1998 in the quiet farm town of Sulphur Springs, Texas, Fair to Midland quickly became one of the Lone Star State’s fastest-rising musical forces, earning critical acclaim for their first two independent releases, 2001’s The Carbon Copy Silver Lining EP and the 2004 album inter.funda.stifle, despite being completely under-the-radar. But with a growing buzz and a trail of blown minds behind them, Fair to Midland naturally found themselves looking for a label that could respect their DIY roots, while giving them the means to take their sound to the grand new level it demanded. Enter System of a Down frontman Serj Tankian, who, after being blown away by one of the band’s live performances in April of 2006, signed Fair to Midland to his Serjical Strike label and that Fall released the band’s first “official” recording: The Drawn and Quartered E.P. "It's not often that one comes across bands that are truly original, poetic, progressive, artsy and memorable, compounded by a killer live performance,” Tankian says of his protégés. “Fair to Midland is such a band."

As Fair to Midland began playing out in support of the EP, audiences and press alike both seconded Tankian’s reaction, with Ink 19 magazine noting, "Vocalist Darroh Sudderth transforms from a timid frontman to a spasmatic burst of flailing arms and uninhibited vocal explosions that make him one of the most courageous singers in rock music!"  A sold-out winter 2007 tour with Japanese art-metal legends Dir en grey, followed by a superbly-received performance at the annual SXSW music fest in March, further primed audiences for more from the band.  With Fables From a Mayfly, Fair to Midland have truly delivered, capturing the kinetic energy of their live show while harnessing the array of influences that make them impossible to pigeonhole. “For the most part, our musical tastes are completely different,” says Sudderth, who rounds out the band with guitarist Cliff Campbell, drummer Brett Stowers, bassist Jon Dicken, and keyboardist/electronics manipulator Matt Langley. “We’ve just gotten better at listening to each other over the years. All of our songs are just us trying to find a happy medium between what everyone in the band listens to—and I think that actually being able to do that is what makes us so different from a lot of other ‘rock’ bands today.”

With a spring tour supporting Flyleaf leading up to Fables’ release and a summer’s worth of festivals—from Coachella to Bamboozle to twin German mega-fests Rock Am Ring and Rock Im park, plus the legendary Download festival in the UK that has them sharing stages with My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park and Iron Maiden—Fair to Midland are poised to turn not just prog, but rock music, period, on its ear in 2007. “It’s definitely been a strange ride, going from being this completely DIY, underground thing to being part of a bigger label,” Sudderth explains. “It’s like we can finally step back and evaluate where we’re going with this music without having to worry about, ‘How are we gonna get people to hear it?’” Indeed, getting heard may be half the battle; but when you look across the rock landscape—from the postmodern prog rock of the Mars Volta and Tool to the chart-topping success of Serj Tankian’s own boundary-smashing art-metal powerhouse—it’s easier than ever to imagine Fair to Midland carving out their own plot of land amid these giants.