Pro-shot video of Thrice playing 2003 album The Artist In The Ambulance in full has been published online.

The Youtube channel “monokill” has uploaded 44 minutes of the Californians’ concert at The Showbox in Seattle on June 16. The concert took place during a North American tour celebrating the album’s 20th anniversary, which extended into Europe at the start of this year. Watch the video below.

Thrice released Artist…, their third studio album, on July 22, 2003 via major label Island. Its mixture of metal, hardcore and alt-rock touches won critical acclaim. A contemporary review by Alternative Press said the band were doing for punk’s guitar playing what Iron Maiden had previously done for heavy metal’s.

Artist… was Thrice’s first album to chart on the US’s Billboard 200, reaching number 16. The band’s only albums to chart higher are 2005 follow-up Vheissu and 2016 comeback release To Be Everywhere Is To Be Nowhere, both of which reached number 15. Artist… also topped the US’s Top Internet Albums chart and, in the UK, made it to number nine on the Rock & Metal chart.

Last year, Thrice released a re-recording of Artist… featuring Architects, Holy Fawn and other collaborators. Around the same time, Metal Hammer named Artist… as Thrice’s second-best album, behind only Vheissu.

Journalist Matt Mills wrote: “Making their debut for major label Island Records, Thrice willingly put the blinders on, limiting their eclecticism to make all the money invested into them worthwhile. The band also streamlined their songs in the process, with such mainstays as All That’s Left and Silhouette making a fusion of scream-along refrains, heavy metal riffing and punkish brevity seem easy.”

In February, Thrice singer/guitarist Dustin Kensrue gave Metal Hammer the story behind every song on Artist…. He reflected on the band’s headspace following the Island deal, saying, “We’d just signed to a major label and we had been really careful about, ‘Do we even wanna do that?’ We were challenging ourselves on this record and in our career, and we thought, ‘This might not work at all, but we’re going to find out!’”

Japanese post-hardcore sextet Envy have announced their long-awaited eighth album, Eunoia.

The follow-up to 2020’s The Fallen Crimson will be released on October 11 by Pelagic Records.

See the full track listing and artwork below.

To coincide with the announcement, the band have released Eunoia’s lead single, Beyond The Raindrops.

Listen to the evocative post-rock track below.

Envy guitarist, songwriter and co-founder Nobukata Kawai comments: “This is one of the first songs we wrote for the album.

“I found a melodic, down-tuned riff and everything started from there.”

He continues: “Even with a demo version recorded, Beyond The Raindrops almost didn’t make the album.

“I found the demo again during the last few days of recording preparations and sent it to Tetsu [vocalist and fellow co-founder Tetsuya Fukagawa] to see what he thought.

“If I hadn’t listened to the demo that day, I don’t think this song would’ve been recorded!”

Fukagawa has also commented on Beyond The Raindrops, saying: “This song was a new challenge for me.

“Nobu sent the demo over at the last minute so I ended up writing the lyrics with a focus on sounds that fit the melody, rather than the meaning of the words.

“I think it ultimately gives the song something raw and honest that we’ve never explored as a band before.”

Envy formed in Tokyo, Japan, as a screamo act in 1992.

They released their debut album, From Here To Eternity, six years later.

On their second album, 2001’s All The Footprints You’ve Ever Left And The Fear Expecting Ahead, the band began to add post-rock and shoegaze tones to their sound.

Fukagawa left Envy in 2016 but shockingly rejoined the band live onstage two years later.

Envy don’t have any live dates announced at time of publication, but have previously toured with the likes of Mogwai, Isis and Deafheaven.

They’ve also released split albums with Jesu, Thursday and more.

Envy – Eunoia track listing:

01. Piecemeal
02. Imagination And Creation
03. The Night And The Void
04. Beyond The Raindrops
05. Whiteout
06. Lingering Light
07. Lingering Echoes
08. January’s Dusk

There's no getting around it: Lyndsey Gunnulfsen is cool as fuck. As Pvris' chameleonic talisman casually strides around, guitar in hand, grinning from ear to ear at the sight of 3,000-odd fans singing the hell out of My House, she looks a world away from the hyper-talented but self-conscious frontwoman this writer saw nervously take to the stage at the band's first London show at the tiny Barfly almost a decade ago. To be fair, that set was plagued with technical difficulties - something Gunnulfsen acknowledges with a chuckle at one point tonight - but the more the Boston singer-songwriter has taken centre stage in recent years, the more it's suited her. Tonight, the final show of their European tour, feels like a well-earned victory lap, and as much fun as everyone is clearly having, few seem to be enjoying it all quite as much as her.

Before all that, though, there's the not-so-small matter of an enjoyable but short set from rising, genre-splicing nu gen artist Sophie Powers and a fabulously lairy showing from Scene Queen, the latter of whom could be headlining venues like these in the not-too-distant future given the hype train that has followed her as of late. Packing a two-man backing band and a decidedly modest stage show for such a colourful and full-on character means there's the nagging feeling we're not quite getting the full Scene Queen experience tonight, but when you've got irrepressible bops like 18+ and Pink G-String in your arsenal, there's no way you're not gonna win people over. An appearance from Wargasm's Sam Matlock for a particularly rowdy Barbie & Ken is a highlight, as is a heartfelt speech about the influence Pvris has had on Scene Queen's life, music and ethos. 

As Lyndsey Gunnulfsen and her band - now consisting of drummer Denny Agosto and bassist Brian MacDonald - arrive on stage to screams of delight and launch into the propulsive, EDM-powered I Don't Wanna Do This Any More, Pvris' evolution from anthemic, synthy post hardcore heroes to slick alt-pop machine is laid bare. It's the first of many cuts from last year's defiant but divisive Evergreen to air tonight - all but one track from the album are played, in fact - consolidating Gunnulfsen's steadfast belief in the course she currently has Pvris steered towards.

That's not to say Pvris are ignoring their past; tracks from across their entire catalogue get an airing tonight, including six picks from beloved debut album White Noise (albeit most of those, tellingly, appearing in abridged form). "You look beautiful, hot, confident, fun," Gunnulfsen tells an adoring and increasingly hyped audience after a blast through some of the band's more energetic numbers, before Love Is A... signals a run of slower, more vulnerable songs ("We're getting it over with early!" she jokes). 

Everything, no matter the pace or style, is lapped up; some fans can be seen crying, phones aloft, during the set's more intimate moments, others try to spark mosh pits at the drop of a riff. "I love it, a bunch of men on men!" Gunnulfsen smirks to peals of laughter; when she's not lightly bantering the crowd, she's waltzing over to lead her bandmates through a mini jamming sesh, a rock star with all the chops and charisma but, it seems, very little of the ego. 

As Scene Queen returns to the stage to sing (and twerk) her way through a riotous Goddess with her idol, it's clear that while few would have predicted Pvris looking and sounding quite like this ten years ago, their fearlessness is now paying dividends, and it feels like their journey is still barely beginning. "I don't know what to say up here," laughs Gunnulfsen. "I wanna connect but I'm fucking awkward." To be honest, she doesn't need to say much at this point: Pvris would have had The Troxy in the palm of their hand without breaking a sweat.

In 2022, the fourth season of Netflix's smash hit horror series Stranger Things was pumping out viral moments by the episode, from the now classic Kate Bush Running Up That Hill drop to the glut of Eddie Munson memes and the character's show-stealing Master Of Puppets scene. One of the biggest stars of the season, however, was undoubtedly Jamie Campbell Bower, whose delightfully sinister turn as arch villain Vecna won him legions of new fans.

Bower, who has also appeared in the Twilight and Harry Potter franchises, is a major music fan and has produced a number of his own projects over the years. The most high-profile of those, punk rock quintet Counterfeit, split in 2020, but Bower has now returned with an altogether heavier sound - a new posthardcore project called BloodMagic whose fittingly titled first single, Death / Rebirth, is out now.

Watch the video for Death / Rebirth below. It is unknown at present what future plans BloodMagic have, but we reckon it's a safe bet we'll hear more from them soon.

Bower has previously revealed that he listened to a lot of extreme metal to help him get into the right mindset to play Vecna in Stranger Things. “When I was prepping for Vecna, to get into Vecna, I would use a lot of bands like Sunn 0))), Carpathian Forest, Darkthrone, Mayhem,” he told the Kyle Meredith With... podcast. “A lot of black metal kind of stuff that I just really latched onto and thought, ‘Wow, this is great.’ There’s also something about the sensitivity in the way black metal is made and their belief system which I really fucking vibe with.”

New Years Day singer Ash Costello has opened up on the album that most helped shape her as an artist in a new interview with Metal Hammer. Discussing the songs that mean the most to her, Costello points to classic AFI track Girl's Not Grey and its parent album, 2003's legendary Sing The Sorrow, as crucial in her development both as a music fan and as a musician.

"I don’t even know where to begin with Girl’s Not Grey by AFI," says the singer. "Sing The Sorrow is probably the most important album in my life. I wouldn’t be the singer, the artist, anything without that album. I always try to remember that when we’re writing new music – to take risks and do something out of the box and surprise people. That’s what AFI taught me. My first time watching Davey Havok perform I wanted to be him so bad, more than I’ve ever wanted to be any other frontperson. He was flawless. Ever since that moment and to this day before I go onstage, I think, ‘Just be Davey Havok.'"

Elsewhere, Costello pays tribute to fellow modern metal heroine Maria Brink of In This Moment, explaining that the two bands were at one time "signed to the same label" (Century Media): "I was at the office one day, and they played me the video for Blood [In This Moment's 2012 single from the album of the same name]. I was an instant fan. I thought the song was so iconic and Maria Brink looked iconic. I thought she was so bold and so brave. I wanted to embody that in myself "

New Years Day released new album Half Black Heart earlier this year. In a 6/10 review for Metal Hammer, Emily Swingle wrote of the record: "Half Black Heart is halfway there. It showcases a formidable hard rock confidence, yet would greatly benefit from that fearless unpredictability of their youth." You can read more from Ash Costello in the latest issue of Metal Hammer, out now.

L.S. Dunes – a post-hardcore supergroup whose members include My Chemical Romance’s Frank Iero and Coheed And Cambria’s Travis Stever – have claimed that lawyers for the toy company Lego are demanding that they take down a recent music video.

Guitarist Iero announced via Twitter on Thursday that the band’s video clip for Grey Veins, which includes stop-motion-animated Lego mini-figures, has drawn the ire of the corporation.

“Dear Lego, why are you having your lawyers call my record label and demand we take down the L.S. Dunes music video we made for our song Grey Veins?” Iero asked in a statement.

“As a card carrying Lego VIP and lifelong creator and builder I am hurt and wildly confused. I have spent more hours than I can calculate, not to mention thousands upon thousands of dollars over the years, buying and building your sets as a child, a teenager, a semi-adult, and now as a dad who builds with his son. An eleven year old who loves Legos more than anyone I have ever met, and even made us dedicate a room in our house to building them. My family and I have vacationed at Legoland and my other band [My Chemical Romance] has been voted into your Lego Ideas program by 10k supporters as a potential future build set.

“I love your company because you gave us bricks and taught us we didn’t have to accept the world as it was, we could see what was possible and build it ourselves. I have taken that inspiration and created a universe of my own and now you want to squash it, why?”

The guitarist then signed off: “Let Creators Create. Have your people stop calling my people. Spread kindness, spread the creativity, spread the word. Leggo My Lego.”

Public response to the revelation has largely been confused and critical of Lego’s actions. “As a Lego lover and avid builder, this is a bummer,” one fan tweeted. “Their whole thing is letting people create what they wanna create.” Another wrote: “Huge fan of both Frank and Lego feeling pretty bummed out by this. Not cool.”

L.S. Dunes released their debut album, Past Lives, last year and are currently touring the US.

Watch the video for Grey Veins below, while you still can.

It’s time to stop calling anything with members of more than one other band in it a supergroup. Alright, Hollywood Vampires are an exception to the rule, but more often than not, these bands are just like-minded musicians wanting to do something a little different. As is the case with Vanishing Life.

Comprising …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead bassist Autry Fulbright II and drummer Jamie Miller, Rise Against guitarist Zach Blair and Gorilla Biscuits/Quicksand/Rival Schools legend Walter Schreifels behind the mic, Vanishing Life brew an angular concoction of straight-up, bullshit-free post-hardcore with a bullish edge and existential lyrics. Influences seep in from its members’ respective projects alongside everything from Black Flag to Angel Olsen, Wire to The Damned – and it’s fantastic. We spoke to Schreifels and peeled back the layers surrounding the band’s debut LP, Surveillance.

The idea for the band came through a chance meeting at Groezrock Festival 2013 and evolved through emails. Coming from a DIY, hardcore background, was that detachment weird for you?

Walter: “It’s not so unusual to be hanging out with your friends when someone says something funny and you say, ‘Oh, dude, that’ll be our band name.’ Then you make this whole concept of what the band is, what you’d wear, what you’d do, and you kinda laugh about it but it never happens. This was just a good group of people and we kinda got psyched on doing something together, but to be honest I didn’t think it’d go past that fun conversation. But once the emails started coming in and they had demos attached to them, I thought of it as a challenge to do something really cool and to just do something. A lot of the time you say you’re gonna do something and you don’t, so this time I just thought, ‘Screw it, I’m gonna step through the window and see what becomes of it.’”

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Coming from your musical background, does the term ‘supergroup’ get your goat?

“It’s kind of a lazy way to talk about it, yeah. We’re not thinking, “Let’s form a supergroup with your superpowers and my superpowers COMBINED!” We’re just guys who hang out. I’ve toured with Trail of Dead and I’ve known Zach for many years from the festival circuit, but more like acquaintances. It was really just a lark. In this modern time, with the way music is in my field, you’ve gotta keep putting things out and challenging yourself because it’s not like some old school thing where you’re on a major label, you make an album every three years then tour the cycle. Everyone’s an independent operator and they’ve gotta challenge themselves creatively and that’s how I looked at this. The fact that these guys are in popular bands is good in the way that maybe more people might pay attention to it, but calling it a supergroup is almost another way of saying you shouldn’t take it too seriously. I don’t really care because the music is good.”

Vanishing Life recorded their first seven-inch in two days. How did that gestate into a full-length?

“Initially, Geoff Rickly from Thursday was supposed to be one of the band’s singers – there were supposed to be multiple singers but I was the only one who actually put anything down on the songs! Geoff stepped in later because he had a label and he wanted us to put out a single and make an album. Immediately we had a runway built for us to keep moving forward; it’s like when the universe presents a certain path to you and we all just decided to walk along it into the full-length.”

So how did the music on Surveillance come to fruition from there?

“Primarily, most of the music came from Jamie. He made these really awesome, simple demos that allowed the band to colour in the music; the style wasn’t pushing one way or another, the guitar was distorted and that’s as much character as it had. That gave us room to bring it to life. I presented a few songs when were able to get together because I’m really not good at making demos. I wrote Realist, Thinking Weightless and Pretty Ruined, and Zach did demos for Painter and Big Other. Autry was the guy who kept it flowing. There was no dead weight and we’re playing in a blueprint that’s within a language we all understood, and that language is punk rock.”

Was the album recorded in a similar way to the seven-inch, then?

“Yeah, and it was really refreshing for me. Again, in this day and age, people record on their computers at home, they’re manipulating everything and they’re going over it beat by beat to make sure everything’s perfect and to its maximum effect. We didn’t have that option. For all of us to get a week together for this record was as much as we had; I don’t think I’ve ever recorded an album this way, even in my early days. We were in there for seven days and we came out with a full album. I had half the lyrics written going into it, so every night after the session I’d go to my cheap hotel room nearby and write lyrics for the next songs. There was a spontaneity to it that kinda stressed me out at the time, because I’m always thinking, “Argh, I could do it better!” Being under that pressure, that it had to be done that week, had an effect on how the record came out and I love that.”

Lyrically, Surveillance is pretty heavy.

“I set the blueprint with the original couple of songs and just expanded on that. The name Vanishing Life evokes stuff like extinction and environmentalism, and the title Surveillance suggests that we’re on some sort of pivot on the evolutionary scale, like how much of what we do is recorded and documented and how weird it is looking outward and into other people’s lives, and how the whole geopolitical aspect of the world is figuring into that. It’s pretty astounding. I’m trying to take a peek at that stuff from a humanist point of view, but at the same time, there’s all this paranoia and manipulation and our own narcissism that’s really been given pace in the past ten years, so where do you find your humanity? You can move to the woods and check out and there’s different means. How do you find love when you have Tinder? Not that I’m on Tinder, but it’s fascinating. Every song taps into that paranoia and existential questioning, but also has a sort of relief moment where it’s like, “Everything’s all right. I love you, baby. It’s gonna be OK.” I wanted to have those little respites and there’s humour in there too. I also remember going to the Stasi museum in Berlin just before recording this album and just being knocked out by how East Germany really had the surveillance state down; they were cutting-edge in a lot of ways.”

What’s that dashing wolf doing on the album cover?

“I can’t remember the photographer’s name, but an old friend of mine from Switzerland, Thomas Rütti did the album design and he got the photograph from his fine art photographer friend. I was just captivated by the stark image of this wolf, this endangered animal, kinda confronting the glow of a computer screen. It’s a strong image when you think of it in any deeper way than, ‘It’s a wolf.’ Its curiosity juxtaposes the danger of the wolf, because it’s a fierce animal but it’s not in a fierce pose, and that struck me. Vanishing Life sums up all these environmental issues, so this animal on the front is endangered yet so beautiful and fierce, and it approaches this light with a curiosity that could ultimately be its undoing. Maybe I’m looking too much into it, but it looks really cool.”

You even took the mic for several Gorilla Biscuits shows and had a lovely time. Does Vanishing Life give you the same rush?

“Oh, for sure. It’s cool that you’ve mentioned that because it was definitely one of my inspirations for this. Gorilla Biscuits is too dangerous for me – too many fully grown men jumping on you – but the idea of being a frontperson and having the freedom and thrill to run around… I didn’t want to do another band where I’m singing and playing guitar. Having played music for so long, if I want to invest in something creatively, it has to be in a realm where I’m not comfortable. Although I did play guitar on the record – I couldn’t let that go! – the idea of performing without the guitar, not taking the guitar to the airport, having my hands free on stage and all that stuff makes it a new experience for me. I get off on that fresh insight.”

Vanishing Life’s Surveillance will be released on November 25. The band are on tour throughout November.

Metal Hammer Quiz: Supergroups

Formed in 1999, Taking Back Sunday cut their teeth in the Long Island emo/hardcore scene, coming to international attention with the release of 2002’s debut full-length Tell All Your Friends. A visceral barrage of wounded pride, broken hearts and impassioned desperation mixed with unhealthy doses of bitter jealous and vengeful thinking, it became a staple of a scene that it very much helped create. But now, in 2016, with the band’s full-length out in the shops, it’s very clear that that has all changed.

This is now the third record that the line-up who made that very first full-length – vocalist Adam Lazzara, guitarist Eddie Reyes, lead guitarist John Nolan, bassist Shaun Cooper and drummer Mark O’Connell – have made since reuniting in 2010, and it marks a dramatic shift in both theme and tone for the band. In fact, this record is their most complete and full transformation to date. The culmination of many years of deliberately walking away from the pigeonhole they found themselves stuck inside, Tidal Wave is a determined evolution of who the band are, yet one made with the full knowledge of who – and what – they once were, as Adam Lazzara explains.

Taking Back Sunday have been slowly breaking free from the emo label for a while. It really sounds like Tidal Wave is a conscious effort to leave behind the past…

Adam Lazzara: “Yes, it is. This is record number seven for Taking Back Sunday. We were trying to learn from other people’s history, because there’s a bunch of other bands we’re into, and if they make it to LP seven then they’re kind of fixed in what they do – they just do their thing and put out the records and do a tour and that’s it. We were really conscious of that and we wanted to not make something that we’ve already made before. We asked ourselves how to make each song better, and how to take it out of somewhere that we would typically go and into the realm of something that’s more in line with what we’re all just listening to now.”

I have a friend who has a tongue-in-cheek theory that all punk musicians end up playing country music. He’s not entirely serious, and you’re certainly not Garth Brooks, but these songs are more mellow and more nuanced. Do you think that’s just age?

“I think as you get older you grow as a person. You have all this life experience to draw from. Not only that, but you’re introduced to a bigger world – the blinders start to get peeled back. As far as punk rock guys becoming country guys, I think it’s because, for a lot of them, and even ones I’ve talked to, they couldn’t deal with being in a band anymore, but they don’t want to spend a whole lot of time learning how to play the guitar better, so it’s just easier to do that. [laughs] But speaking for myself, and speaking for the rest of the band, too, there is a great big world out there and I think as we grow we’re introduced to more and more of it. I think, when we’re younger, we’re just focused on whatever scene we’re in and whatever music was happening then. Like when I got a little older my dad was like ‘You have to listen to this Steppenwolf album’ and I’d be like ‘Dad, I’m just not ready’ and then lo and behold I turned 25 and I’m like ‘Holy shit! Why haven’t I listened to this sooner?!’ So as things like that start to introduce themselves as time goes on, we’d be letting ourselves down if we weren’t writing to our full potential and just sticking with the formula that makes Taking Back Sunday Taking Back Sunday. I also think that that would be the easy thing to do, but the reality is that each one of us are way better players than we were last year, two years ago, three years ago, and so on. I feel like the easy road would be to play what people expect from us, because people expect a certain thing from Taking Back Sunday. If we just went and did that thing and put the record out, that would be a half-hearted thing because we wouldn’t be acknowledging our own potential.”

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With that in mind, I was going to ask what loyalty you feel to the band you used to be, as opposed to the band you are. Obviously Tell All Your Friends and Where You Want To Be were important albums within that – in inverted commas – emo scene, and they mean a lot to a lot of people…

“The hope is, though, that we’ve grown together. Because I think that one of the things about those records is that they hit people when they were at a certain point in their lives. Like, we’re on two separate paths, but right then, for some reason, we were on the same path as a lot of folks and that’s how it resonated. And then as you grow, just the way it is with any old friend, one of you goes one way and the other goes the other way for a while and then eventually, somewhere along the line, you meet back up again. Because the person that says – and I read this shit on the internet all the time – the person that says ‘I wish they would write another Tell All Your Friends’ is full of shit, because it’s not going to mean the same thing to them all these years later, because they’re a different person. They’re looking at it through a different filter, a different lens. You looked at things much differently when you were 18 than you do you right now, you know? It’s that whole thing. So the hope is that we’ve grown with folks and that they’ve grown with us and hopefully they’ll like it.”

Was it weird, then, to go back and do the Tell All Your Friends anniversary tour, because you’re playing these songs that meant one thing when you wrote them but the meaning of which now is presumably very different?

“I think we may have talked about this before, but even now we’ll play songs like Cute Without The ‘E’ and they take on this life of their own and they start to become bigger than, like, what I think about it or the place where I was coming from, because there’s this fire that gets turned on in the room that’s out of our control. But going back and doing that tour was this cathartic thing – it was like looking back through an old photo album and saying ‘Oh man, look how far we’ve come and look at all this.’”

Right. Because there’s such an expansive sound on this record. You haven’t gone down that simple, country route – these are complex songs. Homecoming sounds almost Arcade Fire-esque…

“Oh man. I haven’t heard that yet, but I’m going to take that as a compliment. I really like that band! For us, it’s funny, because we’ve kind of embraced this idea that no song’s ever going to be done. Because even after we record it, when we go out and play it, little things are still going to change. With that one, we started with the original version of it, which was awesome, and then the version that’s on the record, which I think is even better, we had this idea that if we stripped everything away and had to play this acoustically, I want it to feel like we’re hanging out in my backyard or in John [Nolan]’s backyard, because that’s what we do – it gets to a certain point of the night where someone pulls out a guitar and we trade songs, and we wanted to have that feel. And then Mark [O’Connell] came up with that beat, which we ended up looping and it just worked out.”

This is the third record that the original line-up has made since you got back together and you definitely sound very comfortable playing together. Do you feel that?

“Yeah. Also, it’s the first time in Taking Back Sunday history that we’ve made three consecutive records with one line-up, which I think is pretty funny. But we’ve learned how to work with one another very well, and we’ve also gotten to this point where we understand the writing process is going to be a democratic thing and everybody is throwing their two cents in – and you can tell when someone has more of a vision or idea than another person, and that’s when that person knows when to step back and let that person take it. So they go as far as they can take it, and then you hop in and things like that.”

How do you feel, at the age of 34, about being the frontman of a former emo-punk band or whatever? What does age do your perspective of being in this band and writing songs, especially now that you have two kids? Everything’s changed in terms of who you are compared to when this band started.

“And I think that reflects in the music, too. I take it much more seriously, and I already took it very seriously. I didn’t think it could go up a notch, but now we handle things with a lot more care. It used to be that we’d need twelve songs, so we’d work the shit out of them but then at some point we’d be like ‘Fine, put it out!’ Now – and I think you can hear it on Tidal Wave, and it’s a crazy thing to even say out loud – but we’ve had talks about the fact that this is going to be our legacy, so that this needs to be the best shit we’ve ever done, or why else are we doing it still? And that’s how we approached it.”

But do you feel as stimulated at this age? Your direction is very different, the visceral angst of early TBS doesn’t exist anymore and you’re happy, you have a family and your inspiration is very different.

“Yes it is. But I do think that angst is still there, and I think it’s something that’s always going to be a part of me. It’s in my personality. Especially with having a family, I’m reminded that it’s a part of me a whole lot, and it’s one of those things where it’s like ‘Okay, in this situation, I’ve really got to keep this in check here because these are my people.’ And that’s where the band comes in, because I have the outlet for it. And now I also understand other things like the approach. I used to be really concerned with what other people were doing and things like that, and now I could really care less. It’s just ‘What are we going to do and how can we be the best that we can possibly be?’ That’s just kind of where the focus has shifted, and I think that’s something that’s happened with everyone in the band.”

What’s the significance of Jacksonville? You sing about going back there on Homecoming, and your previous US tour finished there. Was that just coincidence?

“So our buddy Mike Pepe engineered this record and we recorded again with Mike Sapone, and Mike Sapone is real big into everything happening for a reason, that there’s no such thing as coincidence. Even during the recording process, if he saw something that was similar to a lyric from one of the songs he’d like ‘It’s too crazy, right?! This was meant to be!’ When we were wrapping up recording it, that’s when the offer for the Jacksonville show came through and we were all like ‘Oh my God! It was meant to be!’ We haven’t really played in Jacksonville a lot over the years so just the fact we’re putting out a record with a song that speaks about going back there and then all of a sudden this random show comes up…it was pretty funny. But that song, I think, means something a little different to everyone in the band, especially John and I. I was looking at it from the point of view of having done all these navy tours, where you go to different bases where troops are stationed and you play for them, and during that process you hear a lot of crazy stories from talking to people and having conversations, because it’s a completely different life than the one that I’ve led. So one of the motivations for me with that song was just taking that stuff, which was so heavy, and trying to get those feelings out. But also, having a family and touring and being gone, I was always the guy in the band that was like ‘I don’t care for home, keep us out playing.’ Whereas now I’m like ‘Well, we need to be home for this time – we can go out here and here.’ So that’s changed, and there’s an element of that in this song that I relate to greatly. But then I felt I was being too much of a princess complaining about having to do this awesome job of entertaining people. So it was putting those two things together.”

I remember us talking about the idea of living the dream back then, 10 years ago. So how has that dream shifted for you? How has it changed?

“Well, I thought very early on – and then for years – that one day you would just arrive and things would get really easy and cushy. And that is not true! And I don’t know why I had that idea in my idea – I guess it’s kind of how I looked at things as a kid, and it’s how I looked at adulthood, like it was this thing where you reach an age and you just know how to do shit. Or you reach an age and you just know how to do all the things that need to be done, so everything just takes care of itself. And I guess that’s a testament to having great parents, because that’s how my dad made it look. But looking back, that’s not the case. You have to stay hungry, to put it real simply. Even now, there’s a part of me waiting for that feeling of having to work everything out just goes away, but it’s not ever going to go away. That’s the hard thing to realise.”

Taking Back Sunday’s Tidal Wave is out now. The band are currently on tour.

Their ninth album, Integrity Blues, is one of the deepest yet in terms of subject matter. After taking a year out from band duties, during which time bassist Rick Burch discovered a passion for distilling, and drummer Zach Lind self-released music with his wife, the band realised their next album had to be a meaningful snapshot of the stage they were all at in life. Integrity Blues was born, marking the start of a new, grown-up chapter for Jimmy Eat World. We sat down with the band to find out more.

You’ve talked about this album being about accepting life and the changed it throws at you. What made you want to write something that philosophical?

Jim Adkins (vocals/guitar): “It’s just part of growing up, which is funny to say being as old as we are. The only thing consistent in life is that it’s going to change, and I think that’s something that gets shown to you over and over as time goes on. I guess [it’s about] finding your way through that – you can look at it as a challenge, or you can look at it as an opportunity. If you look at it as an opportunity you end up in a place where you can grow from it. That’s also been shown over and over again, and the rewards from that are hard to quantify. If you just look at things as an opportunity for growth, you’re always shown something that you didn’t expect. that ends up leading you to a better place.”

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When you first started writing the record, did you make a conscious decision to talk about things like that?

Jim: “It’s an all-encompassing feeling. I noticed myself getting stuck writing lyrics because I’d instantly see through what I was talking about, and I’d be like, ‘this is pointless’. I’d see through the futility of the struggle of the speaker of the song and would just get stuck at trying to move on. After a while I started thinking, ‘what’s really behind that?’ If the problem isn’t interesting, what’s the real solution behind it?”

Was it quite a collaborative writing effort?

Jim: “It was pretty collaborative, you never clock out of this gig, you’re always working on material. Things might not turn into a complete song right away but you never throw anything out, and over time that generates a big stack of ideas. Some things are closer to being full songs, some things just stay as scraps for a long time, and all of it ends up going through a band editing process and being fleshed out into that state where it’s a real song.”

Rick Burch (bass): “This time we brought in a producer really early on, when things were still at the snippet stage. Generally in the past when bringing in a producer, we’ve already developed a lot of ideas into a complete demo version of the song, but this time we started collaborating early on with Justin Meldal-Johnsen (Paramore, Tegan and Sara). It was great to have that outside perspective.”

Are there any particular songs that he really brought to life?

Jim: “Going away for a year before we started working on Integrity Blues and just taking total time off from the band helped us refresh our perspective on how we wanted to challenge ourselves. This is our ninth album, and really, why should it exist at all? We had to find that place where we could answer that for ourselves. You’re faced with a musical puzzle when you’re writing and recording, and sometimes you take the easy, familiar road to solve the problem and you don’t even realise you’re doing it, but there might be a more challenging interesting road that you need that outside perspective to bring in and further challenge you. So I guess having Justin in the process was really helpful across the board, we got the feedback we’d never have come up with on our own. A song like Pass The Baby, it always was the concept that it is, but I think that we might not have chosen to develop that to a complete state without him pushing us on.”

Are there any songs that went through a total rework from what they began life as?

Jim: “Integrity Blues, the title track, started off as an acoustic waltz kind of thing. I wouldn’t say we reworked it, but there was definitely a handful of different ways we could have gone with making it. It ended up being this unusual ensemble accompanying me just singing. I don’t think we have anything like that on our other records.”

Get Right has been called the ‘comeback track’. Do you see it that way?

Zach: “We didn’t really plan it out that way, but I think it was a good song to start off with, and coupled with Sure And Certain, those songs seemed to do a pretty good job of getting people ready for what was coming on the record. One of the main reasons why Get Right was one of the ones we released early was because the UK label really liked it and wanted a rock song to start things off over here.”

Now your tour dates have been announced, which songs are you looking forward to performing live?

Rick: “Get Right is like a familiar Jimmy Eat World song.”
Jim: “Now that we’re getting to the stage where we’re performing this stuff for people, we’re learning more about the songs. Get Right is fun to play, it’s just more of a rock song. I think the material’s kind of new for people – haven’t had a lot of time to digest it, and if you’re going to hear something you don’t know it’s easier to hear something that’s more upbeat.”

Jimmy Eat World release Integrity Blues on October 21 through RCA. The band begin their tour on October 1.

Alternative festival Wrecking Ball was first held in Atlanta in August 2015, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of fabled Atlanta gig space The Masquerade. Sadly, due to gentrification and the subsequent rise in rent, the two story venue will soon say goodbye to the turf it’s occupied for the past 25 years. Thankfully, though – in part due to the success of last year’s event – the venue won’t be shutting down but moving, so this year’s follow-up bash stands as both a celebration of all that has been and all that will come once the venue relocates. It was the final, blowout event to be held at the old location, and what a celebration it was – a deluge of awesome bands in a brilliant setting with an incredible atmosphere. Here are 12 things we discovered over the course of the Masquerade’s big final event.

12. The Masquerade has played host to most bands on the bill at some point

Whether it’s rising hometown stars like Big Jesus and Microwave, or more established acts like The Menzingers, Anti-Flag and Motion City Soundtrack – actually pretty much every band playing the festival – The Masquerade is (and forever will be) a venue beloved by bands and Atlantans alike. In fact, it was the talk of the town, and even people who had never set foot in it were mourning its loss and singing its praises and significance.

11. Reunions were the order of the day this year…

In much the same way that Chicago’s Riot Fest was dominated by classic bands performing classic albums in full, this year’s Wrecking Ball brought back a whole bunch of bands who had recently reunited after calling it quits, namely Rainer Maria, Hey Mercedes, Thursday, The Promise Ring, and Piebald. Some had played gigs before this weekend, some hadn’t, but all were brilliant reminders of why they were so revered in the first place.

10. The newer bands on the bill were fantastic too

Big Jesus opened the festival outside on the Saturday and drew plenty of people with their warm, fuzzy, ’90s-tinged alternative rock – and rightly so. They’re one of the most exciting new bands around. Pears were unbelievably wild and put on a reckless, insane show to showcase their bellicose, snotty punk rock, while Sorority Noise were also on top form, channelling everything into their haunting, expansive and emotionally damaged tunes. And then there was Microwave. Like Big Jesus, they also hail from Atlanta, and the hometown crowd meant there was barely any room to move during their set. Full of fiery rage and emotional energy, the four-piece played like the stars they deserve to become. A brand new Brand New in the making.

9. Anti-Flag are one of the most important bands in the USA today

It’s no secret that the USA is facing something of a political crisis at the moment. Thank fuck, then, for Pittsburgh’s Anti-Flag, who are still rallying against injustice and inequality with passion and fervour. During the breakdown of Fuck Police Brutality the band deliver a too-long roll-call of African-Americans recently killed by police in America, while Die For The Government remains, 20 years after they first recorded it, a vicious attack on the way corporations continue to influence the powers that be through big money. New cuts Brandenburg Gate and Fabled World were just as insurrectionary as those old tunes, while a cover of Fugazi’s Waiting Room was the icing on the cake of one of the most powerful and inspiring sets of the weekend that ended with the band playing their instruments in the crowd.

8. Joyce Manor are all growed up

One of the joys of Joyce Manor is just how sloppy and messy their songs are – they come off like Weezer covering the Descendents and are all about living recklessly and carelessly for the moment. 2012’s second album, for example was 13 minutes and four seconds long. Yet here they were playing a 50 minute set on one of the big outdoor stages, and despite running out of songs a little bit early, they pulled it off absolutely brilliantly. Bigger (and longer) things are surely beckoning down the road, and deservedly so.

7. Dinosaur Jr. do a mean cover of The Cure

Not to be outdone on the covers front, veteran alternative trio Dinosaur Jr. treated the crowd to their cover – originally recorded in 1987 during the You’re Living All Over Me sessions – of The Cure’s Just Like Heaven. As on that recording, the trio somehow managed to keep true to the original version of the song while also turning it into their own, Dinosaur Jr.-ising it into a beast of a song that was as grungy and heavy as it was poppy and uplifting.

6. Juliette Lewis probably should have stuck to acting

On the whole, the Wrecking Ball line-up was pretty damn stellar. But there are always exceptions to the rule, and in this case it was Juliette Lewis. There’s nothing wrong with her band or how they played, but the actress’ entire stage disingenuous demeanour was marked by affectation and insincerity. In fact, it felt very much like she was playing the part of a rocker – and coming up short. Which makes perfect sense, when you think about it.

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5. Thursday are back!

One of the most anticipated reunions of the weekend was the live return of Thursday, who hadn’t played live since calling it quits in 2011. Frontman Geoff Rickly has been busy with No Devotion recently, but it’s clear that he’s just as attached to Thursday’s songs as ever. They played one intimate show inside on the Saturday night – their first in over four years – and a larger one outside the next day, which saw an entire field pour out their hearts to a band who, clearly, had been away for far too long. They ended with Understanding In A Car Crash, which was the only way they could have ended, and made the entire crowd very happy indeed.

4. The Bouncing Souls weren’t quite sure where they were

It’s must be hard keeping a tab on where you’re on the road for an extended period of time – just ask Bruce Springsteen, who earlier this year shouted “Party noises, Pittsburgh!” when he was actually in Cleveland. But on an occasion dedicated to the life, death and rebirth of The Masquerade, The Bouncing Souls probably should have remembered the venue’s name. Instead, frontman Greg Attonito, referred to it as the Marquee – a famous New York venue that’s now closed down – and then kept making jokes about getting it wrong. It was clear that he was trying to inject some humour into his faux pas, but instead of being funny it was just a little bit embarrassing.

3. Touché Amoré’s new songs sound great live

We’re fortunate enough to have heard the new record by Touché Amoré and can attest to its greatness. Nothing, however, quite prepared us for their powerful impact live. Known for their short, savage songs, both live and record, the band’s new album largely confronts the death of frontman Jeremy Bolm’s mother. They’re slower, more contemplative affairs on which Bolm often swaps out his visceral screams for spoken word ruminations. The new songs they played live – Displacement and Palm Dreams – were, unsurprisingly, incredibly powerful and intense, and sent visible chills throughout a room that was as hot and heaving as Hell itself.

2. Loads of other great bands also played great sets…

Namely Piebald, Drive Like Jehu, Hey Mercedes, Milemarker, Deafheaven, The Promise Ring, Chris Farren, American Football, Motion City Soundtrack, Rainer Maria, CIV and Gorilla Biscuits.

1. The atmosphere at Wrecking Ball was truly amazing

Wrecking Ball 2016 was a true celebration of music, of the venue and of the people who’ve been part of its history. And while people could have sadly ruminated on the fact that, after this weekend, it would be gone forever, the atmosphere was much more buoyant and upbeat – it was about looking ahead to the future and what’s to come as much as saying goodbye to the past. Here’s to next year!

Photos: Katherine Alex Beaven