All too often, history is viewed as a contextual lens for the present. As noted novelist George Santayana has approximately said, “those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it”. The implication, of course, is that modernity should be informed by history. Yet as we all know, history is itself a product of the present – historical currency is the result of present designation, not inherent “historicalness”. Would the skeleton of Lucy, commonly seen as a significant evolutionary link between human and ape, be of importance to us now had we not had a modern investment in evolutionary theory, or would she just be a wonky-looking monkey skeleton?

Lucy: Not sad anymore.

Such are the thoughts of thousands of kids across the United States and Europe, as they ponder the true origins of tumblr-friendly pop punk in 2013. “I mean, sure, New Found Glory is old and they are awesome,” they think, “but there has got to be more to pop punk’s beginnings than that and Blink-182. Also, should I get this tattoo of a burrito hi-fiving a slice of pizza while riding a surfboard on my ankle or as a chest piece?”

The bands I will discuss in this article are not necessarily “important” bands, in the sense that for the most part, they weren’t very influential (even if some of them were fairly well known at one time), and they have almost entirely been musically surpassed by newer bands who fully realized the ideas that these bands were merely suggesting back when they were new and/or relevant. Nonetheless, as pop punk has undoubtedly become the most important cultural force of the 21st century, these bands have gained a certain historical significance due to the fact that they were poppy hardcore bands who (at times awkwardly) pointed the way towards the hardcore-y pop punk of the 2010s. While I can’t guarantee that any of these bands will sound better to you than the modern pop punk/new jack hardcore we all know and love today, they are helpful to know about if you are trying to prove to your friends that you know more about “the roots of pop punk” than they do. As such, you may want to try tossing out a couple of these bands’ names every once in a while (you don’t even really have to listen to their music to do so, just remember a couple of their names). Just don’t post anything about them on Tumblr, unless you want to end up with one of those embarrassing music video posts that only gets like, two notes max.

While Saves The Day were likely the first tr00 pop punk band (even though I vigorously defended the stance that they were emo, not pop punk ten years ago when I first started listening to them), H2O were the first band to use modern hardcore as an aesthetic basis for having melodramatic pop punk songs about girls and hanging out with your friends. That said, H2O were definitely coming from a very different time and place, and when they were talking about “hanging out with their friends” it often actually meant “sticking by your buds even though the cops are investigating some of them for hospitalizing some people” rather than “eating pizza and doing zany things at the mall”. Nonetheless, all of the elements of tr00 pop punk in place here as early as 1995, and H2O does deserve some credit for that.

I haven’t been able to come across very much information on Overthrow, other than that they are from Long Island and haven’t released very much music. That said, their 1999 album React is a very unique combination of 90s hardcore, pop punk hooks, and kinda monotone (but sweet) singing parts (ala Vision Of Disorder). Of course, it goes without saying that virtually nobody outside of a couple hundred people in New York/New Jersey know or care about this band, so to ponder this band’s influence would be an exercise in pointlessness  – still, their recordings go to show that pop punk and hardcore were friends as early as 1999, if only to a very small, select audience.

Stretch Armstrong are best known as South Carolina’s premier uber posi alterna-Christian hardcore band, but by 2005 they had gotten progressively melodic to the point where their music sounded like a fairly even mix of slightly emo-y pop punk and hardcore. Unfortunately, they split up at pop punk’s commercial low point, just prior to easycore breathing life back into the genre (and setting the stage for tr00 pop punk to reign supreme in the early 2010s).  It’s too bad, because songs such as “Hearts On Fire” really don’t at all sound out of place with any modern pop punk today. With better timing and greater exposure, they could conceivably have been considered godfathers of the genre along with NFG, Lifetime, etc.

Circa 2007, easycore was already in effect, but Daggermouth was one of its earliest adopters. Unlike much of the subsequent easycore to come (not to mention tr00 pop punk as well), Daggermouth came from more from the angle of combining really aggressive Epifat-style skate punk with hardcore gang shouts and breakdowns rather than building pop punk around a hardcore base. I wish this band was more appreciated by The Kids today as they are great and the songs still hold up, but then again they may still be too new to appreciated retroactively. Also, one can’t neglect to mention that while they didn’t invent zany song titles in hardcore, they definitely upped the ante on this important, utterly taken-for-granted element of pop punk.

So it is said: Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.  However, all too often, history is viewed as a series of major events rather than a sloppy, evolutionary shuffle up to a present status. Pop punk, in its modern and neo-regressionary incarnations, demonstrates this mindset: With regards to modern pop punk, deservedly huge bands in the genre such as New Found Glory are celebrated and imitated relentlessly, but nobody thinks about the corny melodrama of H2O, the stylistic uncertainty of Overthrow, or ill timing of Stretch Armstrong that didn’t exactly pave the way for tr00 pop punk, but did at the very least throw a couple of disparate shovels into the gravel. Same goes for unfortunately growing number of bands such as Title Fight who are going nu-grunge: They feel that they are supposed to imitate “historical” bands such as Nirvana and uh…judging by the music, apparently Hum and Filter (???), yet they completely forsake the sound of the bands whose shoulders the aforementioned bands stood upon.

Which, to be sure, is absolutely for the better and the way things should be, because if there’s anything that makes me want curl up into a ball and sob myself to sleep while clutching a copy Homesick tight to my chest, it’s the thought of some band of twenty year olds sounding like fucking Mother Love Bone in 2013.

DISCUSSION: What is your favorite totally irrelevant band that sort of but not really bridged the gap between hardcore and pop punk? Will anyone here own up to actually liking H2O? Is there a such thing as historical essence, or are the keys of history perpetually in the hands of the present? Are you old enough to know who Mother Love Bone and Green River are? Does all of the 90s worship make you nostalgic for when bands like Title Fight and TWY were just fumbling their way out of easycore?

I called my 2012 State Of The Scene Address “It’s Cool To Be Tr00,” because 2011 marked the death of any remaining vestiges of the scene era, and the dawn of a new grey/brown/olive green age. I am not sure who exactly drew all the neon cartoon animals that every band from 2007-2011 put on their merch, but I’m sure that 2012 and 2013 were not kind to them. And I don’t see 2014 being any easier for them, because this year officially heralds the arrival of your new king: the late 90s. Specifically, 1997.

I like to think of SHIFT as the posterchildren for the late 90s “hardcore ppl playing in alternative rock” trend– they had Mark from UNDERTOW on guitar and their drummer Samantha went on to play in MOTLEY CRUE, HOLE and Billy Ray Cyrus’ band. Note: I actually like them a lot.

The big trend in 1997 was for people who were in the big hardcore bands of the last few years to break up and start a new band that played boring alternative rock, but still kinda hung around the hardcore scene (unsure if that was because they ‘still believed in teh values of diy hardcore but have matured as musicians’ or just bc they weren’t good enough to play legit rock shows). The Revelation Records “In Flight Program” comp from 1997 was the perfect snapshot of this (see this post for more details) and when I look for new music on Youtube these days, sometimes I feel like I am listening to it again.

I was kinda hoping that #ezcrab would end up being a counterpoint to the rising 90s-worship trend, but it looks like that movement died faster than my boner when Miley Cyrus got a boy haircut and started wearing 80s one-piece swimsuits on stage. From what I can tell, 2014′s definition of “pop-punk” is a lot less like NFG, Blink, or The Vandals, and a lot more like “soft grunge sad boy twinklecore telecaster emo.” Reblog for more desaturated pics of forests, tattooed couples laying in bed, and Vans.

Exhibit 1, the new incarnation of SUCH GOLD (should we call this post-crewneckcore??). Back in the 90s, there was a show on MTV called “120 Minutes,” which was the alt-rock sister to “Headbanger’s Ball.” With no other way to see videos (no internet), I would sit through hours of crap in hopes of catching one of the 3 hardcore videos they would play per year. The biggest bummer was when I got all excited about a band who people in stupid magazines like Spin would refer to as “legends of hardcore/punk,” (SEAWEED, FUGAZI, SONIC YOUTH, etc) but then they ended up sounding like this: about as punk as eating lunch with the principle.

OF MICE & MEN basically sound like “shitty SLIPKNOT” now. They remind me of some band who would have been called TELLING JENNIFER or MAKING STEPHANIE in the late 90s whose biggest achievement was opening for THREE DOORS DOWN once.

And it’s not just the pop-punk scene: hot new signings to former scene kings RISE RECORDS include HOT WATER MUSIC, BOUNCING SOULS, 7 SECONDS, and WAR GENERATION (ft the singer of 90s post-hc icons SENSEFIELD)… it literally reads like the lineup of the “crappy little stage nobody paid attention to on Warped Tour 1997″ Say goodbye to breakdowns, and say hello to every former Risecore band copying SLIPKNOT, KORN, and LINKIN PARK. And in the world of Real Hardcore, in 2014 it’s all about being super into LIFE OF AGONY, CROWBAR, and TYPE OF NEGATIVE (basically, any band that they made fun of a lot on Beavis & Butthead).

*exasperated face emoji*

And it’s not just the music, it’s everything! It’s like someone found a big box labeled “90s STEEZ” in a dusty corner of the Victory Records warehouse and distributed it to every kid on tumblr. For example, these wiggerish windbreakers were all the rage in 97– if you had a dollar for every VOD or EARTH CRISIS windbreaker you saw at any given show, you’d have enough to buy a copy of the NYHC documentary on VHS and maybe even a vegan cookie from the Food Not Bombs table (protip: don’t throw away the idiotic flyer they forced you to take until you’re out of their sight). Oh and worst of all, fucking high-waisted jeans brb barfing

Back in the 90s, when Victory sent out promo copies to zines for review, it was super annoying because they would send cassettes (instead of vinyl or CD) and you’d be like “grose, a tape– cheap assholes.” Fast forward to 2014 and tapes are now a coveted trinket… my how times have changed.

While kids fetishizing dead media formats is hardly a new thing, I feel like 2014 is taking it to a whole new level. For example, the other day I went to a little ‘hxc xmas’ thing with some friends of mine who are 18-22 years old. The most popular gift? Records. I mean, if you like vinyl then that’s cool, whatever, but watching an 18 year-old girl in 2013 get all jazzed about hardcore 7″s is just weird. I mean the last time I owned a record player she was probably in 2nd grade… idgi. And then there was the time one of those kids mentioned that he wanted to do a VHS for his band………

Picture of some funny old stuff I found in my parents’ basement, or the TITLE FIGHT merch table??

And then there is the baffling, annoying and exhausting return of 90s-style, hyper-PC ‘social justice’ nonsense. I’m not going to get into that too much here because I’ve spent the last 15 years trying to forget living through that shit the first time and I have no interest in revisiting it in 2014 lol. I feel like it’s only a matter of time before tumblr kids discover stuff like this lineup of “workshops” from the 1999 More Than Music fest and take the insanity to the next level:

Kinda hard to read in the image, but a few gems include: Sizism (womyn only), Alternative Menstrual Products, Womyn In Bands, and Radical Politics Of Makeup. Oh and something called “Barbie Liberation.” No clue what that one was but I’m sure it was so fucking insane and retarded that it would make your head spin if someone explained it.

I guess you could file this under “crabby old guy complains about what Kids These Days are into,” and maybe u would be right. And hey, if kids are having a good time with this stuff then more power to them… but that’s exactly the reason I don’t like where this is headed: as anyone else who lived thru 90s hardcore can tell you, it was anything but fun. Kids, take it from me, you will regret this!!! Put down the Telecaster. Throw away the high-waisted denim shorts. Smash your CARNIVORE vinyl. I have seen where the 90s hardcore road leads you, and I promise you don’t want to go there.

If you’ve ever walked into a Hollister store at your local mall, you probably noticed a few things: it’s dark as fuck, they spray a lot of their “So Cal” scent, and a lot of hot slutty girls shop there. And also the music, which often causes a moment of cognitive dissonance when you’re like “oh cool, what up-and-coming new pop-punk band is this and how did they end up playing in a store for upper-middle-class popular kids,” but then you realize that although it SOUNDS like a band you should know about, it isn’t. And that’s HOLLISTERCORE: wholesome, super polished bands that SEEM like they’re pop-punk but have no roots in DIY culture. The kind of stuff your little sister’s hot friend listens to– you know, the one who always wears Pink yoga pants and says FALL OUT BOY is her favorite band but she only has the singles on her iPhone and couldn’t care less about them playing in basement hardcore bands when she was in 3rd grade.

Like I said in my post about I CALL FIVES a while back, the reason I like this stuff so much is that it’s basically “pop-punk without the sleepy eyes and bony knees”– all the good parts like upbeat posi songs about summer and girls, without the dumb parts like self-pity, low self-esteem, and crying about how your pussy hurts because you don’t fit in at college. And I back that hard, because the last fucking thing the world needs is more skinnyfat white guys with low testosterone and bad posture encouraging kids to feel sorry for themselves. I mean lettuce be cereal, anyone who spends their time at college writing songs about how lonely they are instead of getting fucked up and trying to smash as many freshman as possible is probably better off just getting smothered with a pillow (for their good and ours).

This WE THE KINGS song/video is maybe the perfect example of HOLLISTERCORE: unremarkable-but-good upbeat rock song set to footage of cleancut, 7/10 white girl doing homework on her Macbook, resisting the urge to go to a G-rated house party (no alcohol, that’s illegal– not to mention against her school’s honor code!!) with the non-threatening singer of the band.

You will notice a theme here: lots of white girls. What grassy fields are to 2009 risecore, 7/10, G-rated white girls are to HOLLISTERCORE. In this case, the white girl is even wearing a Hollister sweater! (peep the shot at :35). While you could argue that A LOSS FOR WORDS is slightly too edgy to be Hollistercore (they are on Rise and our buddy Andrew Wade recorded this album), I feel like their wholesome, all-American good looks make them a fit for this important genre.

7/10 white girl being angsty and sad until the guys from the band arrive to cheer her up. Singer who looks like he would play in the church rock band. Teenagers frolicking in a suburban home with no adult supervision but still not doing anything bad. THIS IS HOLLISTERCORE. Side note, SING IT LOUD is probably my favorite band in this genre– some really great songs.

Video starts with a shot of a plain, “pretty but not TOO pretty” white girl. Singer’s scruffy beard and slouchy beanie say “I’m a bad boy,” but when the chorus of “I’m no angel, I’m just me, but I will love you endlessly,” you can tell that he really MEANS it– he just needs the right girl and he can change!!! And maybe– just maybe– that girl is you.

And on the singer-songwriter side of things, we have the posterchild for HOLLISTERCORE Chris Drew aka NEVERSHOUTNEVER. I have become a huge, 100% non-ironic fan of NSN lately, not only because of great songs like this one (which is basically saying “fuck you, butthurt old people”), but because Chris seems like a guy who very truly does not give a fucking shit about being “famous” or whatever and just wants to make art, and I can pretty much always get behind people like that. For example, when he made that dork Bryan Stars cry, and his moshcore side project EATMEWHILEIMHOT which has awesome songs like “xBURRITOx” and “xDESTROYx.” He’s a cool kid and I back him hard.

And last but certainly not least, speaking of 7/10 white girls, please meet my HOLLISTERCORE crush CADY GROVES. I like to think of her as the mallcore version of Demi Lovato– super cute, average-looking white girl with juuuuuuuust a hint of “bad girl.” But not like the “bad girl” that anyone reading this site is probably familiar with (“Well right now I’m doing porn, but only because the money is so good– I’m gonna quit as soon as I save up enough money to open my vegan cupcake truck”). More like “bad girl” as in “Omg I put a 1″ wide red streak in my hair with temporary dye that I bought at hot topic my mom is gonna FREAK lol but whatever i don’t even care lol” aka THE PERFECT KIND OF GIRL <3

and then there is Aeropostale… guess who shops there.

Today we think of long, zany song titles of the domain of pop-punk and easycore. For example, read the following (made-up) song title to yourself out loud: “But Matt, I Thought You Said You’d Trade Me Those Pogs For My N64 Controller.” You can practically hear the major-key breakdowns and synth leads, right?? But that wasn’t always the case. Back in the day, having excessively long, zany, sarcastic song titles was a metalcore thing– or more specifically, what we called “noisecore” at the time (all those herky-jerky, skronky metalcore bands who copied DEADGUY and COALESCE).

Exhibit 1, Botch “I Wanna Be A Sex Symbol On My Own Terms” (1998)

After extensive research through the metalcore fossil record (ie Discogs.com and Youtube), I have determined that the “patient zero” of the excessively long, zany/sarcastic song titles thing is an obscure Vermont band called DROWNINGMAN, who started back in 1996 or so. They never really went anywhere, but were very ahead of their time– I used to be really into this style, and they were definitely among the first to do it, or at least do it well (in 96, BOTCH were still awful).

Exhibit 2, the tracklist from DROWNINGMAN’s 1998 album. While there were maybe a few other bands doing the sarcastic song titles thing, nobody took length to the same, uh, lengths as they did! Still, not quite what we think of as “zany song titles” by today’s standards. This is like a fossil of some prehistoric fish that a creationist holds up next to a picture of a horse and says, “Wait, am I supposed to believe that THIS turned into THIS?!” and turns the camera with a smug grin on his face. But wait… there’s more!

Exhibit 3, the tracklist from their 2005 album. Could this be the missing link between the “noisecore” style of long, sarcastic titles and the late 2000s easycore zany song titles?? I mean, “Dude Status: Revoked” and “Major Disappointment Reporting For Duty” could be straight off the WONDER YEARS album where they still had breakdowns and wrote songs about Kool-Aid and Captain Crunch.

Set aside for a minute the obvious fact that this subgenre of hardcore has aged horribly and that listening to this stuff makes you want to jam a mechanical pencil into your eardrums. Is it possible that we have found the genesis of zany songs about BMX, Sega Genesis, pizza and friends with suburban white person names like Matt, Ben, and Zack????

Having now been aware of and in some manner or another participated in The Scene for close to a decade and a half, I’ve observed that within the decade or so it takes for trends to change, each year within a decade can be classified in one of three ways: Either it is an incubation year, in which The Next Big Thing hasn’t quite come along yet, but the elements are either already there or developing and just haven’t caught on yet (ie: In 2000, I saw scene hair well before scene became a national trend, via 18 Visions fandom), a breakthrough year, in which The Next Big Thing really “arrives” so to speak (ie: 2010 saw the release of The Wonder Years’ “Upsides” and Man Overboard’s “Real Talk”, ushering in the age of tr00 pop punk (followed shortly after by major albums from The Story So Far and Title Fight in 2011)), or a reinforcement year, in which the major trend of the decade has already arrived, and the year serves to further reinforce or expand upon the established trend (ie: 2001 was ‘the year emo broke’ in the public’s eye, so to speak, and by 2004? Well, emo is still big, there are just more bands and a wider awareness for it).

2014 is definitely shaping up to be a reinforcement year, and as such, we can most likely expect to see little change and more of a continuation and extrapolation of the kind of stuff we have been talking about for roughly three years, now. As an example in terms of continuing trends, we see that the 90s still have a stranglehold on the tastes of the average hardcore kid: At a show I went to the other day, I saw plenty of Life Of Agony and Crowbar shirts, and suburbanites were all about “street tough” bands (I saw a 15 year old wearing a Cold As Life shirt, and was no lack of love in terms of musical and merch representation of 90s NYHC elsewhere).

But, for once, I am not here to talk to you about the history of some stupid old bands nobody should but for some reason may give a shit about. Actually, JK, of course I’m going to talk to you about some stupid old bands nobody should but for some reason do give a shit about! But this isn’t going to be another one of my perhaps too well worn “young ppl like old stuff like [x] band this is why I think they do that” posts. Not everyone is necessarily aware of this, but I am actually fairly good at predicting certain trends myself (source: I listened to Mineral in 2003 way before it was cool to start jocking them again), and the purpose of this article will be to identify which old bands you should start listening to NOW (relative to the current trends of late 2013/early 2014) in order to achieve a very advanced level of “old school credibility” by the time 2016 rolls around.

I will warn you right off the bat: jocking the bands I am going to present to you below WILL seem like a risky move in the present, and there is little doubt people will call you a poser for actively repping them now. However, Galileo was also called a fool in his time, but who had the last laugh? If you keep an open mind and are willing to have your advertised musical preferences met with hostility and indifference from certain 19 year olds on the internet, getting onboard with these bands now may potentially pay huge credibility dividends in the not-too-distant future.

NU GRUNGE

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It was bound to happen, but I am still nonetheless sorry to report that as of 2013, nu grunge is definitely a thing and bands such as Title Fight are riding the wave of bigmuff revivalism straight to the crest of Tumblr fame. That said, it you really want to be ahead of the pack, don’t take the easy way out by wasting your time declaring to the world that you listen to entry-level poser fodder such as Nirvana! Don’t get me wrong, they are a great band, but nu grungers who rep Nirvana super hard are kind of like those “classic punk” guys from the early 2000s who wanted to show all the Good Charlotte-loving weenies on the internet what was up by creating Listmanias on Amazon (remember those?) that said “Want to listen to some REAL punk???” but then the list would just be a bunch of super obvious shit like The Ramones and The Sex Pistols and other stuff that any idiot who is even vaguely aware of punk would already know about. Don’t be that guy! Instead:

LISTEN TO THIS:

Mark my words: The days are not long upon us when Creed will be old enough for The Kids to accept them as a ‘clasic late 90s hard rock band’. The early adopters will of course have to be a little cloying about it, repping them semi-ironically while obviously letting the influence show in their music, but it won’t be long before Creed, the ultimate uncool band (besides maybe Nickelback, who will likely receive similar treatment), becomes the de jour band to rip off. And why not? They actually have written some great singles, and once post-grunge becomes old enough to acceptably enjoy, The Kids will most likely be all over this band.

“REAL” HARDCORE:

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Again, like Nirvana, I’m not telling you not to listen to Madball because they are a bad band. Obviously, they are great – indisputably one of the most important and influential groups of modern hardcore, and anyone who disagrees is a poser baby who needs to go back to hardcore toddler school for dumb people. That said, anyone involved with “real hardcore” these days knows this, and you aren’t fooling anyone with your “old school tastes” – you are simply being late to the party. Being “street” is cool to little tr00 hardcore kids right now (as long as they don’t actually have to lives the lives of the old bands they imitate), but to truly be ahead of the pack, you have to think about where trends will be a few years from now. And since the late 90s/early 2000s worship is on the horizon…

LISTEN TO THIS:

I have a slightly weird music fan relationship with 18 Visions, because I really hated them back when they were around because all the popular, good-looking kids at my school repped them super hard and dressed like them (srs), and I was a little punk rock asshole. So while those kids were pulling all the super hot girls, participating in sports, and generally making the most of their high school experience, I was hanging out in some dank, isolated corner of the lunch area trying to get one of my mean spirited punk friends to actually pay attention to me as I told them about how I thought I saw Duane Peters at the skatepark as they sold each other pot over the lunch table. Poor social choices on my part aside, I considered 18V the ultimate “trendy” band and thus didn’t give them a chance until after I had already left California and they were long gone. Well, it turns out I was goofing hard because they truly were trend setters (in terms of both music and fashion),  and they still hold up well today. It is unfortunate that they were so ahead of their time back  when nobody (outside of California) seemed to give a shit, but now is the time is right to start jocking them again, since they are old, the music is really good, and the whole “tortured artist/glamor kills” thing is going to become cool again in the latter part of the decade once teenage suburbanites grow out of their faux street hustle phase.

POP PUNK

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Pop punk has become such a big thing at this point that some of The Kids may feel compelled to “really get back to their roots” by moving back past the early 2000s worship of Blink, NFG, and Green Day, and explore some more “classic” pop punk stuff like NOFX. Here’s the problem with that: NOFX were definitely always punk as fuck, but they were only considered pop punk because snobby kids wanted to differentiate them from “real” punk bands [read: bands who were older and sold more poorly], and somehow the label stuck. Well, now that they have been a band for like, 30 years, stupid gross trupunx have finally decided to come around and embrace them, so now they are only really current with old people and fat beardo punk slobs. Since my alignment is lawful good/pop punk, I feel compelled to warn the pop punk youth of today that you have no business going down that rabbit hole – if you are under the age of 25, nothing awaits you there but greasy hair, battle jackets, and utterly dysfunctional females (if any are present and single). Stay pizza, stay posi, stay pop punk.

LISTEN TO THIS:

While I guess the term “emo” isn’t exactly the four letter word it once was (there are now bands self-identifying as emo, which is really fucking weird having lived through an era where it was the one label no band wanted to have), some of the catchier/better emo bands are now being rebranded by their fans as “pop punk” – ostensibly for the purposes of simultaneously affirming their influence within modern pop punk while at the same time claiming a sense of direct lineage between pop punk and emo where none previously existed. Two of the more obvious examples of this phenomena are Jimmy Eat World and Saves The Day, yet for some reason I have yet to hear any newer pop punk bands talking about The Get-Up Kids. This is a little puzzling to me because Something To Write Home About is a bone fide classic of upbeat emo/power pop [read: proto modern pop punk], and the fact that it so perfectly fits the aesthetics of tr00 pop punk (fun, angsty songs about hanging out with your friends, break ups, and romantic tunes that have tumblr-worthy lyrics) suggests that it will likely only be a matter of time before pop punk kids start worshipping this band. Get in on the action now while the stock in this band is low – if pop punk survives to 2019 (and God help us, it will), you will cash in big on the 20th anniversary tour of STWHA!

NEO EMO

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While neo emo is originally an offshoot of modern pop punk, the number of bands emerging that are completely divorced from pop punk in terms of music and aesthetics is reaching a critical level to the point by which the subsubsubgenre will likely be its own entity entirely by about 2016. An awful lot of bands are either talking about American Football or writing music that sounds exactly like them, and such is a perfect example of a marginal band that nobody really cared about back when they existed suddenly become “classic/cult” status. That said, if think you are showing the world how classic your emo tastes are in 2014 by jocking this band, think again – all you are really showing them is that you may have accidentally heard 20 seconds of any Real Friends song at one point or another. Not very impressive.

LISTEN TO THIS:

People who listen to ‘real emo’ usually start with punk, and they become bigger and bigger pussies as they ‘mature’, so they tend to move from punk/hardcore to emo, emo to indie, and then at that point there are a number of different directions they can go towards, but none of them are very pretty (RETURN to punk/hardcore as an older person with some amount of accumulated regret, go Americana, folk, etc). Listening to Desperacidos now gives you the jump on a lot of your neo-emo peers for a few reasons: 1) they are the last gasp of a “true emo” stalwart (Bright Eyes’ Connor O’Burst) right before he went full indie, and 2) they are not currently popular or appreciated amongst young people, so you can say you were listening to them for the second time first, and 3) they are sadder than the average emo band, giving you a leg up on the ‘maturity’ of your tastes (rather than the typical “girl u broke up with me and now I have all these feels” sentiments, these lyrics are about a marriage falling apart amid a blur of desperation and resentment. Ouch.).

Metalcore



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It is weird enough remembering when many of the “classic” metalcore bands where at their peak popularity, taking note as they dropped off and became irrelevant, and then subsequently rose back up to being to being jocked again by a new crop of teenagers, but the idea of tr00 metalcore seemed downright silly to me until I saw direct evidence of children making that distinction on this very website. As such, I feel compelled to say something about that phenomenon here. Tr00 metalcore kids, take note: Listening to Converge is about the lowest hanging fruit you can grab for if you are trying to establish your tr00 credibility amongst other little kids who listen to “real” metalcore. Think about it: they are the highest profile, longest lasting band playing that style of music, and when we are honest with ourselves, they are pretty cheesy (in an unfun, embarrassing way). Like, this song is about someone breaking edge ffs. Seriously.

LISTEN TO THIS:

If you going to insist on being an old school metalcore elitist, the least you can do is put effort in digging up an old band to jock that doesn’t have 186,000 likes on Facebook. The good news is that there is plenty of old metalcore out there from 1997 – 2000 that hardly anybody out there gives a shit about! Codeseven is just one example, but Hopesfall, Walls Of Jericho, and Cave In are all good choices as well. IMPORTANT NOTE: For some reason, a lot of these bands went “space rock” or whatever later in their careers, so make sure you are always trying to find their oldest recordings, and tell your friends you only like their first couple of albums.

SKRAMZ:



DON’T LISTEN TO THIS:

My general advise when it comes to listening to skramz is “don’t”, but if you must listen to wet blanket white boy wah-wah music, just assume the “big” (lol) classic bands are all spoken for and don’t bother mentioning anything about them to your skramz bretheren (don’t even reblog stuff about them!). Of course, I’m preaching to the choir here because if like skramz that much in the first place you probably already assume bands like Saetia, Jerome’s Dream, or whatever are obvious bands that only entry level pose hoes listen to.

LISTEN TO THIS:

Given that Hot Cross consists of a couple members of Saetia, I don’t think this is too tall of an order for even the most hardened skramz elitist, but if you are looking for another set of bands to jock, I suggest mid 2000s skronkcore. Hot Cross is probably the most listenable out of the bunch, but you could just as easily go for something zanier like Ultradolphins or The Locust instead. Circa 2014 99.9999% of the population does not care about these bands, they have albums on vinyl, and they are utterly unlistenable to just about any desirable female – what more could a skramz fan ask for?

Recordcollectorcorecore



DON’T LISTEN TO THIS:

Once again, it pains me to put this band on the “don’t listen to this” list, because even though it sounds like it was recorded in a shed with microphones duct taped to the ceiling, this Negative Approach song makes me want to jump up and punch the nearest living things in the face (sorry cats). Unfortunately, it’s almost 2014 and let’s be real: 80s revivalcore is pretty much dead and The Kids are already moving towards the late 80s (youth crew, super early powerviolence, etc). You could follow the herd and FINALLY get into Sick Of It All’s first album, or you can be a true pioneer in recordcollectorcorecore and bravely venture into uncharted territory…

f you think Antidote is heavy, you will be floored when you hear the fresh, exciting sounds of Madball circa 1994! Your friends will incessantly heckle you in the present for liking that “jock bullshit”, but the joke will be on them when you reveal yourself to be a truly advanced tastemaker, capable of liking music two and a half decades old one half of a decade early. While recordcollectorcorecore in general is pretty depressing territory, the good news is that the future of this scene is actually pretty bright: You know kids are just going to flip when they start listening to Terror in another eight to ten years!

Hopefully, no matter which of the above subgenres you align yourself with, this guide will help provide you with some sense of what to listen to in order to be ahead of the curve in 2014. I can’t promise you instant acknowledgement of your advanced tastes, nor will you find many compatriots at shows or on Tumblr in the present, but such is the path of the trailblazer. Then again, one can argue that being into punk, hardcore, and the various mutations thereof was never about being trendy or just going with the flow of the times anyway – really, it’s about being able to say “I told you so” to everyone else who jumps on the same bandwagon shortly after you do.

DISCUSSION: How accurate do you think these taste predictions will be for 2016 -2018? Who do YOU think The Kids should start listening to now to be ahead of the curve? Will The Get-Up Kids ever get their due amongst pop punk kids? Which of the above subgenres has the least amount of longevity? Will you put your post-neo pop punk nu grunge credibility on the line by listening to Creed now?

I’ve always loved pop punk for the reason that it didn’t matter if you could name 50 bands off the top of your head or if you were super knowledgeable about the history of the genre – it was just fun, catchy music to jam out to.  Unlike other genres that attract an elitist fanbase (like Skramz) which were never meant to be fun in the first place, these kids don’t seem to realize that the music they’re acting like such IMNs about has the word “pop” in it. It’s as though they’re dedicated to raining on people’s parades, like showing up to a 6 year old girl’s birthday party and blowing out the candles before she gets a chance to.

Massive buttpain was caused recently due to two tr00 pop punk bands announcing that they’re touring with All Time Low.

Wait… that’s the top comment after announcing that tour? Not “Hey congrats dudes on landing a tour with a band that’s literally 70 times bigger than you”. Just “Will be leaving after your set”? You mean you’re not even gonna stick around to see Man Overboard play World Favorite?!

I like to describe Handguns sound as “All Time Low with haircuts”.

Does this type of annoying elitism even exist outside of music? Like do sports dudes give people shit who watch the Superbowl, grilling them with questions like “Bro did you even watch every game in the regular season? Can you name all the players on the team? You’re not a tr00 Denver Broncos fan!!” It’s funny seeing these kids get so worked up about something that they’re soon probably going to stop caring about and be ashamed of (like, “yea i went thru a pop punk phase, lol dont laugh at me ok”) once they go full on basement twinkly emo. Plus the fact that most of these kids don’t realize that alot of these bands they’re jocking so hard used to have zero credibility among “real music fans” in their heyday. I can imagine this shocking realization coming in the form of a pop punk version of “A Christmas Carol”.

THE GHOST OF POP PUNK PAST

The first spirit brings Jimmy, a young and devoted pop punk fan, to a middle-class suburban American mall in the early 2000′s. He sees a young pop punk kid much like himself wearing a New Found Glory shirt sitting alone in the corner looking sad.

“Why is he all alone?”, Jimmy asks the ghost of pop punk past.

“You’ll see, Jimmy”, the ghost responds.

A group of hardcore and punk kids walk into the mall and they start pointing and laughing at him.

“Why are they making fun of him?” Jimmy asks with concern.

“He’s a poser”, the ghost tells Jimmy.

“But how? New Found Glory is the most respected band in pop punk. They’re veterans!” Jimmy says.

“Not here they are Jimmy”, the ghost replies.

THE GHOST OF POP PUNK PRESENT

The second spirit brings Jimmy to a young girls room. He sees her crying all over her tumblr dashboard.

“Why is she crying?”, Jimmy asks.

“You made fun of her and called her names because she only reblogs the “obvious” bands.”, the ghost responds.

“But… but she can take it right? I mean a few words never hurt anyone right?”, Jimmy tells the ghost.

“She’s only 15, Jimmy”, says the ghost.

THE GHOST OF POP PUNK YET TO COME

As you can tell, things are not looking so good for Jimmy. This time around he is brought to an All Time Low concert circa 2019.  A bunch of pop punk bros are non-ironically moshing to their set.

“Those pop punk kids aren’t seriously moshing to All Time Low are they? Why would they do that?” Jimmy asks the ghost with a confused look on his face.

“Because All Time Low are pop punk pioneers, Jimmy”, the ghost tells Jimmy.

Suddenly Jimmy breaks down and go cries in a corner like…

In my 20+ years in hardcore, I’ve realized that the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, maybe this year Vans are in and Air Max are out. Swoopy myspace hair is out, Macklemore fades and long greasy metal hair are in– but hardcore kids are still hardcore kids. Their outfits change, they jock a different set of crappy washed up old bands, but the basic DNA of the hardcore scene stays the same. And what I’ve realized is that at end of the day, there are basically only THREE kinds of hardcore kids… which are you?!

Example: Harley Flanagan from CRO-MAGS

SCUMBAG

The heart and soul of Real Hardcore is the scumbags. When I say “scumbag,” I don’t mean that they are assholes or bad people. In fact, oftentimes these are some of the nicest, friendliest people you’ll ever meet. I just mean that they are marginal people, who would be dead, in jail, or institutionalized if they didn’t have the structure that hardcore provides. They are into hardcore because it’s better than jail or rehab.

Although there are less and less of these people with every new generation of hardcore (thank god), the fact of the matter is that they are a key ingredient of the hxc ecosystem. I mean, for someone to be willing to essentially live like a drifter, living in a van with 3 or 4 other alcoholics, traveling around the country making $50 a night on a good day kind of requires that their other options are limited. “Hm…. I’m 26, what should I do with my life? Answer the phone at a tattoo shop? Barback at some shithole so I can sell blow out of the back room? Join the army?” When that’s your range of options, playing bass in TERROR for 1.5 tours starts to sound pretty appealing!

I have a soft spot for scumbags, because I come from a long line of them (most of my family has been in prison and/or a drug addict, and a handful of them are dead from OD, murder, or suicide) and I get where they are coming from. I bust their balls, but I like and respect them. They’re not bad people.

And then we have all the dumb little crew kids who think it’s cool to dress up like scumbags… enough said.

Example: Thanos Reignz from THE EMMURES

WEIRDO

These are the kids who don’t really fit in anywhere else, and end up in hardcore sort of by default. They are into hardcore because they can make weird music/art and people will tolerate it (and sometimes even like it!). Think of this category as kids who were too angry for the Monty Python/drama club crew, too smart for the loser stoner crowd, so they ended up spending a lot of time alone making weird shit (*cough* oh god how i know this feel *cough*)

I’d say the majority of people in good bands fit into this category– they’re usually really ADD space cadets who are pretty much just gonna do what they’re gonna do whether anybody likes it or not. In stark contrast to the people who loudly proclaim that they ‘dont give a fuck what u think’ but in fact give lots of fucks about what you think, these are the guys who sincerely do not give a fuck and that’s what makes them super weird people but also brilliant, innovative creators who set the trends that everybody else follows– Big Chocolate, Kurt Ballou and Todd Jones are three great examples of this.

Example: Kelen from THE STORY SO FAR

RELATIVELY NORMAL PERSON WHO SOMEHOW FOUND OUT ABOUT WEIRD MUSIC

No idea how people like this get into hardcore but they don’t stay for long because, well, why would a normal person stay involved in hardcore? Where do they come from?? How do they even find out about this shit?????? The mind is bottled. I know Kelen from TSSF pretty well and I can promise you that he has much, much better options than playing music for chubby girls with low self-esteem. I can also promise you that he is a genuinely cool, smart, nice guy who will grow up to have a great life as an unremarkable middle-class dad. Jelly :(

I wish I was one of the normals but the truth is I’m a weirdo :( Although I’ve definitely noticed that I tend to be attracted to people in the “relatively normal, good guys” camp like Ray Harkins and the Toontrack guys. What about you?? What type of hardcore kid are you???

Where have all the Pop Punk kids gone? They’re off being sad. Sad is the new happy. Remember when all the EZcore bros evolved into Tr00 Pop Punk bros and said bye bye to the breakdowns? I remember it like it was just yesterday. Well things are progressing into an even tr00er state. Giant water waves of tr00ness are ravaging the nation at a high magnitude, creating a tr00nami, destroying anything fun that stands in it’s path. All of the ex-EZcore Tr00 Pop Punk bros are evolving into Soft Grunge bros at an alarming rate. What is Soft Grunge, you ask?

Remember when the singer of Citizen used to be all like…

Now he’s all like…

keep trying to run from your EZcore past, Matthew, you can’t hide forever

or what about when Soft Grunge heavyweights Basement (aka the British Citizen, or Britizen) were confronted about their old EZcore band?

 Excuses, excuses… why are Soft Grunge bros always filled with excuses?

Here is an accurate chart of how the scene has evolved and where it’s potentially heading…

Basically what we’re witnessing now is a tr00 version of what happened in the early-mid 2000′s. The Mallpunk/Americanpiecore of the early 2000′s was killed off by the faux-Emo/Crycore of the mid 2000′s. Very much in the same way that the Tr00 Pop Punk of the early 2010′s is being overthrown by the Soft Grunge movement of today. Tr00 Emo jockage is at an all time high too. I remember my friend, who was into all these weird bands that no one cared about at the time, was one of the 7 people who was stoked for the new Snowing album to come out back in like 2009. Now them, along with many other twinkly Emo bands (Dads, You Blew It!, that band with the obnoxiously long name) are steadily seeing increasing amounts of jockage.

Meanwhile Mike Kinsella from American Football ponders all the deep philosophical questions like…

For all those hoping that the worst of the tr00bonic plague was over… well I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but it seems as if it’s only just begun. All of the high profile Pop Punk bands are at a major risk of going full-on Soft Grunge or Tr00 Emo as soon as this year even. Meanwhile, there are more and more local bands everywhere who are emulating the Title Fight/Citizen/Basement sound as opposed to The Wonder Years/The Story So Far/Man Overboard. And for all of those who are going to leave comments like “I don’t notice any of this stuff happening”, well maybe that’s because this post is THAT advanced. Try reading this in a year’s time and see if what I’m saying has come true.

                                                brb upping my dose of this

to prepare myself for this

Do u foresee the Soft Grunge takeover? Can Soft Grunge and Pop Punk co-exist in harmony? Am I just an old who is out of touch with contemporary youth culture bcuz all of this stuff already happened like 10 months ago?

Longtime readers will know that SYWH has hyped Southern California as the greatest place in the world, and there really isn’t any disputing that. We have the greatest Mexican food, the best weather (provided you don’t live inland lol) and most importantly, the world’s greatest hardcore scene! As a Socal native currently living in the Sacramento area, I’ve been lucky enough to sample a wide variety of California hardcore, and it would be a disservice of me to NOT aware you to the extremely advanced trend that is sweeping the best coast: CLOSEDCASKETACTIVITIESCORE.

The best part about naming this part of the California scene after this label is the fact that Closed Casket Activities isn’t even from here, because it’s actually run by some dude in New York.  The label released plenty of east coast bands (Harm’s Way being the biggest name they helped blow up) but a few years ago they became permanently entwined with southwest hardcore.  Incidentally or not, CCA serves as an incestuous hub for California’s latest and greatest bands to lay down sick, metal-influenced hardcore in the footsteps of All Out War and Stigmata. Places like Santa Barbara, Pomona and Van Nuys are on some seriously next level shit, at least as far as putting crushingly heavy spins on old trends go. Any time you see a hardcore kid jocking obscure death and doom metal from before they were born, you can bet it’s due to the bros in Nails, Twitching Tongues and Xibalba making destructive moshcore out of the husks of those bands.  It’s thanks to these bands, heavy in ways that are almost weird, that I was ever able to discover hardcore in the first place, so here is their due.

Obviously the crown jewel of the California scene is NAILS- ABANDON ALL LIFE, but everyone and their sister’s tumblr followers knows about that one.  So next up in Hardcore Worldwide™ visibility is Xibalba, who dropped a new track recently.  These guys pulled an unprecedented move by going full doomcore on Hasta La Muerte, evidenced by the fact it was released on Southern Lord and even featured a guest spot by dronemaster Greg Anderson.  But “Death Threat” is more along the lines of devastating tracks like “Cold” and “Stoneheart”.  Somehow, this song manages to have both thrash riffs AND crushing slamz, which is an unusually anachronistic mixture, like if you time traveled to the Civil War and started killing soldiers with laser guns and plasma grenades. CCA is putting out Xibalba’s new split with Suburban Scum soon, and their song ain’t no slouch either.

For obvious reasons, Twitching Tongues is the flagship Closed Casket Activities band. Taylor (drums – Nails//guitars – TT) and Colin Young (vocals – TT) are almost synonymous with the label and the Socal hardcore sound. As a former IMN that worshiped Type O Negative and oldskool death metal and talked shit on anything that had the “-core” in the name, Twitching Tongues is the hardcore band tailor-made for me. If you told me back in high school that a band in the DIY punk scene would sound like a combination of Life of Agony and Bolt Thrower, I’d get mad trying to comprehend something so inherently bizarre.  But if a band can sound as weird as Twitching Tongues does, then I know hardcore isn’t a bad thing after all. These guys used to get a lot of flak online because the vocals are strange and their debut record sounded like Bob Seger at points, but when I see them play there are always tons of bros singing along and fangirls dreamily staring at Colin so that should tell you who won. I already know the “YOU CAN DIE IN PAIN, OR LIVE ANOTHER DAY” pre-breakdown mosh call at 3:51 here is going to be my favorite pit memory when I’m an old man.

In this photo of THE NAILS, hardcore tastemaker Taylor Young casually sports a Demilich shirt. Thankfully I already had my “obscure Finnish death metal” phase in 9th grade, but expect forgotten bands like Adramelech and Rippikoulu to gain some hardcore cred in the next few years.

I am from Ventura, California, so my experience with CLOSEDCASKETACTIVITIESCORE bands are mostly based in neighboring Santa Barbara county.  So I may be biased in saying this, but not much captures the attitude of SBHC and California mosh as well as HARNESS did during their brief existence. Considering these guys barely wrote more than 10 songs, I feel like they managed to command more hype than a sub-mid-3rd tier band normally would. In 10 years people will probably remember them as if they were on the same level as Nails and Xibalba. These guys are literally just mosh riff after mosh riff, like an Exhorder song condensed into two minutes. Victim of Suffering is mandatory listening, and the demo is worth checking out if you can’t get enough of this stuff.

You could consider Disgrace to be the sister band to Harness, because they put out a split together last year and essentially have the same sound but with more fast parts . The band’s current lineup is just Twitching Tongues, but with Taylor on the mic and their guitarist and bassist switching instruments. This EP is heaven if you’re anything like me and your definition of hardcore includes death metal riffs and Dan Seagrave artwork.

Minus is one of the older CCA bands, holding down the southern California scene back in 2010ish, the days of the Ruckus/Xibalba/World of Pain split.  It’s hard to say whether the dudes in Minus are as overtly into metal as most of these bands are; I feel like they fit in well with both traditional and brutal hardcore.  All that matters is that they are from Santa Barbara and go hard as fuck, and this song is particularly violent. Hard Feelings is legendary-status regretcore, and their debut record is one of my favorite 2013 albums. They have a new split with Soul Search coming out on CCA this year, get stoked!

Downpresser is another one of my personal favorite in this scene, and they’re probably the most (relatively) successful SBHC band at the moment. Their new album Don’t Need a Reason has definitely resonated in the tumblrsphere, probably because they choose to write catchier songs with more memorable vocals than most bands do.  Age of Ignorance is my favorite release of theirs but all of their material is excellent.  They recently self-released a compilation CD of everything before Don’t Need a Reason, which should be available online as soon as they finish their current tour with Xibalba and Comeback Kid.

God’s Hate are a new band, so there won’t be that much information about them until they start touring a little bit.  All I know for sure is that Colin plays guitar for them. As you can tell, these guys are jocking late 90s NYHC pretty hard. Everything from the chunky riffs to the wack groaning vocals screams Merauder and Irate. If you like No Zodiac, or thought Crowbar would be better if they sped the fuck up already, you will definitely love this band.

I was pretty butthurt when Harness disbanded while they still had so much potential, so Forced Order might be the closest to a Harness Part 2 as we’ll get.  Same vocalist, and the rest of the members culled from Twitching Tongues, Creatures, Soul Search, e.g. the typical Closed Casket lineup. Like God’s Hate, Forced Order is a brand new band that just has a quick 4 minute demo out so far, but at this point it should be clear that these dudes are experts at churning out brutal fucking hardcore. Their demo is available for free, check the mediafire link on their bandcamp.

Soul Search is the only band listed here that I haven’t seen live or listened to much, even though they’re another important pillar of this scene. They sound like your typical Entombedcore band to me, and that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. They have some sick riffs for sure, and overall they seem to go for a slower approach than most bands.  If you love Xibalba and wish they had more shit out, pick up Soul Search’s EPs. They’re headlining a mini tour of California with Disgrace, God’s Hate, Forced Order and Violent Situation in early April, so I hope I can really get into them then.

What are your favorite CLOSEDCASKETACTIVITIESCORE bands??? Did you call Twitching Tongues a nu metal band in 2011 and now jock them like everyone else?? Will ppl in 2025 write blog posts about how Creatures and Skinfather were “legendary” in the California scene??

The small text says “fuck macho bullshit 4eva” *exasperated face emoji*

My grandpa would always get really mad when he saw Nazi skinheads on TV or whatever, and justifiably so– he fought in World War 2, flying a bomber over Europe, and saw many of his friends die in battle fighting against Hitler. “I didn’t put my goddamn life on the line fighting the Nazis so these guys could walk down the street with swastikas on their jackets!!” he would yell when he saw them on Geraldo or something.

I may not have fought in WW2, but I’d like to think that the years I spent fighting in the trenches of the suffocatingly-PC 90s hardcore scene were roughly on par in terms of how much horrifying shit and human suffering I saw. I mean look I’m sure that Auschwitz was horrible but let’s be honest, it doesn’t compare to horrors of all the “DIY abortion workshops,” bands who spent more of their set talking about white privilege than playing music, and zines using the term “womyn” that I saw with my own eyes in the 90s. And then I see the kid in this picture… Did we learn nothing from those dark years?!

I didn’t spend my weekends at vegan bakesales, protesting fur stores, and getting fat off of Tofutti Cuties so this fucking asshole can troll for feminist pussy on Tumblr without having to answer for his actions!!! Not to mention pretending that he likes CHRISTIAN DEATH– I mean come the fuck on does anyone under 48 actually like that horrible band??

“lol rmbr when we thought we were gonna be the next all time low”

Our friends at Property Of Zack broke the news last week that FTSK are “going on indefinite hiatus” aka breaking up. While in all honesty this is probably long overdue (source: Jonathan resorting to selling fake Rolexes on eBay to pay the bills and nobody caring at all about their last album), I am still a little bit sad to see them go. Yeah, maybe they have been phoning it in for a couple years, but they were hands down my favorite band of The Neon Years™ and I’ll always remember them how they were in their glory years– like how sometimes u will think about an old gf when u fap, and even if she is fat now u will remember how good her boobies felt when she was still hot.

With that said, I want to send FTSK off into the sunset by going thru a few of the highlights of their (surprisingly extensive) discography.

First things first: “Underdog Alma Mater” is an absolute pop masterpiece. Listen to this song on headphones or a nice system and pay close attention– the arrangement is fucking unbelievably good (courtesy of producers Matt Squire, Matt Mahaffey and Geoff Rockwell, who are A+++++ level pop guys). For example, the seamless blend of electronic and acoustic percussion, synths, vocal harmonies and guitar leads in the first 1:30 or so. Even the bassline is advanced (check the slick vocal/bass interplay at 2:25, followed by a glockenspiel that echoes the vocal melody). Literally every single little detail in the arrangements on this album is polished to absolute perfection.

THIS. IS. NEON POP. That piano/synth intro is untouchable. I would die a happy man if I ever came up with something even 1/10th as slick as this song. I remember seeing them in 2009 with some random hipster girl I was dating at the time, drunk & high as fuck on coke and when they started playing this song I felt like I was seeing god with my own eyes.

Now let’s get into some deep cuts! “IDKAYBICTD” aka “I Don’t Know About You But I Came To Dance” is my single favorite FTSK song, and that is saying a lot considering how much I fucking love this band. That intro riff = *heart eyes emoji*

Another deep cut is “Becky Starz,” which was an iTunes-only bonus track from “Underdog.” For some reason this song makes me really nostalgic for that time in my life, even though it was kind of shitty. You can see how long ago this was uploaded because it’s in 4:3– sometimes I wonder what the people who uploaded this stuff like 5 years ago are up to now. What is RockQueen54 doing in 2014?? Almost done with college, deep in her nu-goth/pastel grunge phase? Wonder how she would react if you were like “Hey are your RockQueen54? How come your one and only Youtube upload is a rip of Becky Starz?”

IMO the “Friday” EP was what kinda killed FTSK. Idk what they were thinking with shit like this– it sounds like the theme song from some Nick Jr movie about a dance contest that would star Dylan or Cole Sprouse and only air once then be quickly forgotten. It took forever for this EP to come out, and it kinda killed whatever momentum they had from “Underdog.”

Although it doesn’t have the super-slick neon pop appeal of “Underdog,” I actually love the self-titled album almost as much. This is a good song 2 play when ur like riding the bus on a rainy day thinkin about that kyut girl who works at the deli counter at Whole Foods and how u rly wanna hold hands with her.

Let’s close this bittersweet post with FTSK’s debut video, a snapshot of a simpler time– a carefree era where your biggest worry was who to put in your top 8, who was hitting up your Sidekick, and whether you should identify as emo or scene. We’ve all grown older and our lives have changed, but we’ll always have those cherished memories in our hearts and Photobuckets!! (if u can still remember ur password xD )

RIP FTSK *single tear*

It is no secret that 90s-worship is in full effect with Kids These Days. But as I’ve mentioned many times before, the difference between how the most-jocked 90s bands are seen today vs how they were seen at the time is oftentimes a little facepalmy/baffling– specifically, that the bands who Tumblr kids in 2014 think are super credible were almost universally seen as lulzy shit for posers in the 90s (or just ignored). If u want to be that kid who is into bands that were in their prime before u were a bulge in ur dad’s JNCOs then go for it, I just want u to be informed so u know what ur getting urself into (so when you tell someone my age that u like BIOHAZARD, u wont be surprised when he rolls his eyes and tries not to laugh at u).

What that said, here is your guide to what we thought about the 2014 scene’s favorite 90s hardcore bands, in the 90s!

makes me want to hide under a rock out of vicarious shame when i watch this

BIOHAZARD
The definition of entry-level, fake hardcore for mall kids who watched Headbangers Ball. They were considered a metal band (because they had long hair and played exclusively with metal bands) who used NYHC guys essentially as props in their videos.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014:
Emmure

TYPE O NEGATIVE
Eentry-level mall metal for fat girls with low self-esteem who drape their bulk in lulzy gothic clothes. The idea of anyone in the hardcore scene listening to them would be baffling and laughable. And as for Carnivore, do you think anybody in the 90s hardcore scene had any fucking clue who they were?! lol 90s hardcore kids barely knew who Morbid Angel was let alone a much more obscure band like Carnivore.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
Motionless In White

nothing says “Real Hardcore” like a downtempo gothic cover of a big 80s pop song!

LIFE OF AGONY
They were usually referred to as a “gothic hard rock” band. They were not seen as having ANY ties to the hardcore scene. They did not play with hardcore bands.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
Lacuna Coil

all 17 ppl at this show are STOKED

DISEMBODIED
The 75 or so people in the US who were aware of Disembodied’s existence in the 90s thought they were a great band, but basically nobody gave a shit about them until like 2012 (as the members of the band can confirm I’m sure). Saw them open for Overcast in 1998 and maybe 15 people watched them– and that was probably their biggest tour.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
Feign/Demolisher/Rooks/some other sweet, super-heavy band that nobody gives two fucks about

NEW FOUND GLORY
In the 90s, it was totally unacceptable for hardcore kids to like pop-punk. Maaaaaaybe if u had a particularly advanced personal brand that incorporated being a really zany person who does unexpected things u could admit to liking Screeching Weasel as a “guilty pleasure,” but that’s about it. You certainly were not allowed to think that pop-punk was “real music” or anything like that.

So when Chad quit Shai Hulud to do NFG, everybody laughed and called him a poser and most of all, they called him an idiot for investing his time in his stupid pop-punk side project that was never going to go anywhere.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
I See Stars

H20
I personally thought “FTTW” was a great record and listened to it all the time, but as I said above it was not OK to mix hardcore and pop-punk. H20 were able to get a little bit of begrudging respect due to their ties to highly-respected bands like Madball (and Toby was in the original lineup of Skarhead) but if you were to say that you were a big fan of H20 in 1998 at a hardcore show, the reaction would be kind of like that “horrified face” emoji where it looks like McCauley Culkin on the cover of “Home Alone.”

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
The Wonder Years albums with breakdowns and songs about Kool-Aid

the only good Bane song

BANE/IN MY EYES/TEN YARD FIGHT
Same dorks liked them then as they do now: people who think the world revolves around collecting Star Wars dolls and crappy hardcore 7″s (that you pretend are “amazing”).

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
Bane/In My Eyes/Ten Yard Fight

no caption needed…

FLOORPUNCH
Outside of the braindead bubble that is the tri-state area, nobody really cared about this band other than being kind of bummed at what dicks they were. One time the singer punched Duncan from BY THE GRACE OF GOD in the face and called him a faggot (not sure why but I think it had to do with “disrespecting hardcore” or whatever). With that in mind, most people were not that stoked on this band at the time, for obvious reasons.

Listening to them in the 90s was like listening to this band in 2014: 
Skrewdriver

TR00 90s STEEZ

Via MetalInsider

As you can see, Mike from LP namechecked a few old hardcore bands, and like 500 people have told me about it about as though it’s the most astonishing thing since Jesus was born. It never ceases to amaze me how people think that listening to a certain band is some sort of incredible, special accomplishment that nobody else could POSSIBLY have done (not directing this at MetalInsider btw, just found it on their site).

Especially in this case: 30-something guy from Southern California who plays in a heavy alternative band listens to several popular hardcore/metal bands that have been around for like 25 years?? No way!!!! He couldn’t possibly have found out about them the same way that I and 10s of thousands of other people our age did (back of Thrasher, sticker on someone’s guitar, etc). I thought *I* was the only one special and cultured enough to know about obscure bands like Meshuggah and Gorilla Biscuits!!!

Hypothesis: there is a nearly perfect, negative correlation between how much people describe a band as “amazing” and how “amazing” they actually are. Basically, the more people online call a band “amazing” the more likely they are to be pretentious wieners who make music for other pretentious wieners with low self-esteem, with the central theme of the music being about how ur a pretentious wiener with low self-esteem (complete with rebloggable lyrics that validate your self-centered tween angst rly speak to you).

For example, bands that everyone calls “amazing”: Bane, Have Heart, Fugazi, Alkaline Trio, Defeater, Touche Amore, La Dispute, Botch, etc aka girlfriend-hardcore. How could u possibly think this is “amazing” lol?! Maybe if u have low t.

Bands that nobody has ever called “amazing”: Emmure, The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence, The Summer Set FTSK, Issues, I See Stars, Hatebreed, These Hearts, A Memoria Brooded.

I don’t know about you, but lately I have been all about popular young adult alternative band ISSUES. I just can’t stop dancing to their infectious rhythms and catchy hooks! Obviously their greatest strength is ex-Woe Is Me singer TYLER CARTER, who is not only cute and blond, but also sings these parts with clean vocals and ur like “woahhh that’s crazy, a band with screaming AND singing clearly this is not ur average metalcore band!!” It’s like if Justin Timberlake fronted a djenty nu metal band, i.e. the greatest microgenre of music to ever be created.

When Tyler Carter is not onstage with Issues, dancing and passionately groping at himself, he also has some neat solo stuff worth checking out.  Obviously this dude is an A+ RnB vocalist with some serious songwriting chops, so it’s good to know he’s already experimenting with some straightforward pop songs in case the whole rockstar thing doesn’t work out. This song is from 2011, and it’s a textbook dance track with kewl electro-y parts, tons of sex appeal and just the right enough of autotune to get every girl in the room dancing (even if they pretend to only listen to Backtrack and Integrity). Most of his songs on Youtube are modern RnB just like this, but there is one outlier…

This is from 2013 and I really don’t know what to think of it. Obviously the presentation here is dripping with tr00ness: screaming without guitars to back it up, angsty as fuck lyrics, the sad melody during the chorus, the whole “vocalists passionately singing their hearts out in a very dark studio” trope, etc. But then again, Tyler’s parts are still so smooth they can’t help but be catchy, not to mention that the song still has some crunchy riffs and a breakdown at the end. This is a hybrid of scene and tr00 to a degree heretofore undiscovered! If this song was its own band, they could be HUGE on tumblr: sexy enough to remind scene girls of their neon past, yet still dark/authentic enough that it could be in a playlist sandwiched between Defeater and Being as an Ocean.

What do you think?? Should TyTy focus on his aspiring RnB career, or maybe do some guest spots on Touche Amore albums instead??? Don’t you wish he would front a FTSK-esque powerpop band???  Fame over demise????

If u want to feel really old, consider this: BROKENCYDE has been a band for almost 8 years, and their ‘breakthru single’ “Freaxxx” came out 6 years ago. And while it’s kind of a bummer that they are still a band in 2014, looking back I think they were actually pretty sweet. Say what you want, but aside from possibly ATTACK ATTACK, I don’t think there’s a band this generation that changed the game more than BC13 did.

Let’s take a look back at the rise and fall of this important band:

Most of us became aware of BROKENCYDE when their ‘breakout single’ “Freaxxx” came out and provoked a wave of internet butthurt that I still don’t think I’ve seen the equal of. In order to understand the magnitude of the asspain epidemic, I think it’s worth stepping into the Wayback Machine and remembering that 2008 was a simpler time.

Things moved at a slower pace: you had to carefully read Myspace bulletins to find out about new releases, then go through the trouble of downloading them from some weird Russian Blogspot. So the pace of musical innovation was slower, and we thought people only said things like “crunk/screamo/trance” for a joke in the “genre” field of their MySpace. But then BROKENCYDE actually made a whole album of exactly that combination and the internet exploded. Everybody from Absolute Punk to Vice to Kerrang were so offended by the very existence of this song that you’d think someone raped their mothers.

At first I was as baffled as everybody else by these kids: I mean back then, the idea of kids with crazy scene hair screaming stuff like “make it clap for me” was just too much to process. And looking back, “bree bree, nigga” is probably the most advanced line that has ever been recorded– if you think about it, I’m still not sure anybody has topped that one! And IDK about you, but I think the songs on this record (“BC13 EP”) are actually pretty fucking good.

This song is catchy as fuck, and I spent a LOT of nights in 2008-2010 listening to this and the first HOLLYWOOD UNDEAD album and getting wasted/high with random girls. Not the proudest time of my life but I definitely got any kind of “letting the alien out” impulses out of my system and BC13 was the soundtrack for it.

One of the most common criticisms of the band was that they were “rich white kids from the suburbs,” which I assure you they are not. They are scrappy Mexican kids who grew up poor as shit and do not give a fuck. Which is why I loved this extremely advanced skit from their first full-length: last I checked, rich white kids from the suburbs didn’t say “carnál” for a joke, and I guarantee you this track went over the heads of 99.999% of their audience.

I was hoping that BC13 might be “the next big thing,” and I still think they had potentially to be a semi-mainstream crossover band. They had the image, the hype, and their early songs had a lot of potential. But sadly it was not meant to be. I’m not sure what changed on their end as far as production goes, but after the EP their songs just were not good (for example this one, which was their first big “single” after the BC13 EP). Image and hype can only take a band so far. At some point, if your music is awful you’re going to hit a wall. Ask MILLIONAIRES about that one, who also could have been a big deal if they didn’t have such fucking wack songs after “Alcohol” and “Stay The Night.”

There is one notable exception: “Teach Me How To Scream” is imo a legit banger. I was hoping this would be a sign that they were back on track, but sadly it was just a blip on the radar and the rest of their releases have been mediocre, generic stuff with none of the hooks, energy and genuinely funny/catchy moments from their older songs.

Bafflingly, it looks like they are still a band– or at least, their Facebook is still updated occasionally and they haven’t announced a breakup or whatever. I kinda genuinely feel bad for them, because from the few times I met/interviewed them, they seem like nice kids (except Se7en), and it’s not like they have anything to fall back on. So they’re still out there grinding it out because what the fuck else are they gonna do with their lives??

The real bummer is that I think they’re going to be one of those bands that never gets anointed as tr00/pioneers/Real Music. As we all know, the way it works is that after 10-12 years, almost all bands change from being “gay shit for posers” to “seminal legendary pioneers” who are taken seriously. But there are always a few bands who slip through the cracks and never get their due, and it looks like that’s where BROKENCYDE is headed. They really were way WAY ahead of the curve in terms of combining electronic music, hip hop and screaming/heavy music, but sadly I think they’ll probably get stuck in whatever sad, lonely corner of the internet that LEN, STEREO SKYLINE, and DEMOLISHER live in.

Am I the only one who feels a little weird seeing “Facebook” and “Millionaires” in the same sentence?

There are few things more cringeworthy than when someone who is not a big deal at all acts like they are a big deal. It’s even worse when their ego is so giant that they lack the self-awareness to perceive the lack of interest in their presence, so they keep acting like they’re the shit even when it’s painfully obvious nobody is interested. “WHAT THE FUCK IS UP YALL, WHO WANTS TO GET THIS MOTHERFUCKIN PARTY STARTED?!?!” *crickets/tumbleweeds* “THATS WHAT I FUCKIN THOUGHT!!! ALRIIIIIGHT! YEAH!”

Which is pretty much exactly what happened when I saw MILLIONAIRES last year and they drew ~40 people– and that was with fucking Trace Cyrus headlining. Based on what can only be described as overwhelming lack of popular demand, I am not sure what led them to believe that going on tour for THREE GODDAMN MONTHS was called for, but that is exactly what they’re doing.

The routing looks like a sarcastic joke, like you went down the list of “crappy B/C-level markets that your band will look back on and shudder because last time you played there the shows were so shitty it made you consider giving up on music” and checked off every one of them:

• Fresno, Bakersfield, SLO and some place called Orangeville: strong selection of California dates. Hitting all the big markets.
• Two dates in Indiana (neither of which are Indianapolis)
• Akron, Toledo, Columbus AND Cleveland. Why not throw Dayton, Cincinnati and Youngstown in there just to make sure you get complete saturation of decaying rust belt cities??

Look for turnout on this tour to be so depressingly shitty that you’ll almost feel sorry for the Green sisters (or least as sorry as you can feel for soulless manipulative harpies with rich parents).

ITS YA BOY SERGEANT DAND RYAN P KICKIN IT WITH TRACE CYRIZZLE

This post is about my least favorite trend in hardcore: tryhard little kids adopting the persona of what we might call Fake Real Metal Kids. You are probably asking yourself what this means, but it’s actually pretty simple. As we all know, Real Metal dorks are those obnoxious losers who base their whole identity on the fact that they know everything there is to know about metal and they will take every opportunity they can to lord their worthless knowledge over you.

They suck, but what’s even worse are Fake Real Metal Kids: hardcore kids who have rebranded themselves as Real Metal kids, complete with the same exhausting tendency to beat you over the head with how they’re sooooooo metal. Only unlike actual Real Metal kids, they don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Basically, it’s someone who a) fetishizes the concept of being “metal” and then b) does it completely wrong but with the same (or sometimes worse) attitude. So if you see a kid acting all superior patrician for listening to super entry-level bands of the 90s (Type O, Biohazard, Morbid Angel, Sepultura, Obituary, etc) who doesn’t know shit about anything except the most popular Roadrunner bands, you probably have a Fake Real Metal Kid on your hands.

Some photo documentation:

Fig 1. In this photo we have an almost perfect snapshot of someone transforming from Real Hardcore kid to Fake Real Metal kid. The transition really couldn’t be any more perfect: entry level punx band (Descendents) -> entry level Real Hardcore bands -> (Backtrack, Expire) -> entry level metal bands. Cannabis Corpse lol, fucking poser.

Fig 2. Typical example of a Fake Real Metal Kid. 2.5 years ago his favorite band was Stick To Your Guns and he wanted to get a tattoo of their logo but his mom wouldn’t let him so he pulled his For The Fallen Dreams hoodie over his head and pouted for a week. Now his instagram feed is full of pics of Type O Negative and Crowbar merch. “IM ONLY 17 BUT I THINK 90S DEATH METAL IS THE BEST. ALL THE KIDS AT SCHOOL LISTEN TO WHITECHAPEL AND IM JUST LIKE GET A LIFE U LOOSERS” (note: has never heard of Cynic, Demolition Hammer or Unleashed. Just his new favorite bands Morbid Angel and Obituary.)

Fig 3. Girls can be Fake Real Metal Kids too. Congratulations on listening to Cannibal Corpse in 2014! Gold star for finally discovering a band that the rest of us discovered in 1991 and got sick of by 1995.

this = Fake Real Metal Kids in a nutshell

Of course, like all insecure tryhard trendhoppers, this identity will also be temporary and they’ll move on to the next step of their journey to find themselves as an alternative person. What’s next depends on the person and what’s cool on tumblr at the moment, but typical options are indie rocker, cycling enthusiast, paleo/crossfit nerd, and EDM DJ. See my “Tutorial on growing out of hardcore” for more on this.

It’s no secret that I kind of hate metal and especially metal culture. I highly suggest not having a “metal phase” at all, but if you’re going to do it, please at least do it right. If you’re going to “go metal” please at least listen to metal bands who actually have some currency. Being way too into the LEAST CREDIBLE, most entry-level, obvious 90s metal bands is literally the worst development in youth culture ever and i think we can all agree that it is literally worse than the holocaust!!

If I could single out one pressing question that has been on the minds’ of SYWH readers for quite some time now, a question that’s answer is so daunting that they possibly might be losing sleep over it, it’s WHO is the cutest pop rock singer? I have created an advanced grading system to help us come closer to finding this answer. The girls will be graded based on five categories: fashion sense, eyebrows, booty game, smell prediction, and smile. Let’s see which one of these bitchez ends up on top…

Jenna McDougall

Stunning, beautiful, alluring, perfection; all accurate words used to describe the gorgeousness that is Jenna McDougall from Tonight Alive. Australian rock group “Men At Work” once said that women from the land down under “glow” and Jenna is no exception. Her radiant beauty exudes warmth to all.

Fashion Sense

Jenna’s clothing style is unpredictable and exciting. She can dress young and carefree or mature and sophisticated depending on how she’s feeling that day. You’re probably thinking “lol why is she wearing a hat? Hats are for dudes, silly girl” but the hat actually makes her look cuter. She looks cute in the hat.

plus she reps EZ

Grade: A-

Eyebrows

Jenna’s brow game isn’t outstanding, but it is solid. Gets the job done.

Grade: B+

Booty Game

Jenna’s behind has yet to surface on the internet, but trust me, I saw it in person and that shit was fire. It’s nice and round and very sizable too. I guess the saying “everything’s bigger in Australia” is true.

 Grade: A

Smell Prediction

I don’t have to make a prediction on this one because I actually met Jenna and she smelt incredible. You know those different scented candles that come in glass jars that you see in stores? Imagine taking a whiff of the top three best ones of those at the same time, and that’s what she smelt like.

Grade: A+

Lol I was super nervous to go up and talk to her but I’m glad I did cause she was rly nice and I got to have my picture taken with her and yea. She was so nice.

 Smile

Jenna’s smile is so perfect, ugh, like I actually get happier when I see her smile. Like if a doctor did a brain-scan on me and then showed me a picture Jenna smiling, he would probably detect changes in my brain. Changes from me getting happier. Because I saw her smile.

Grade: A+

FINAL GRADE: A

Moving on…

Hailay Williams

Heylay Williams is known for being the lead singer of “Paramore”, or better yet known as the unaesthetic abomination that has been terrorizing the TV screens of youths for the past decade. Haley is like 30, which probably makes her a bit too old to be in the competition, but I think a few people thought she was kinda cute in like 2005, so I’ll let her in.

Fashion Sense

Hailey keeps taking her grose hipster fashion to offensive new limits, making a mockery of all those forced to look at her. Why does she do it? So that the paparazzi will think she’s just a regular hipster and a famous one? C’mon, not even regular hipsters dress this poorly.

I was so appalled by her outfit here that I almost didn’t notice that her bassist is wearing a bow-tie. Lmao what a weenie.

“OWWW, I just got shocked by this wireless mic and the static electricity messed my hair up so that’s why I look like a battered cat.”

Plot twist: this picture wasn’t taken on Halloween.

Grade: F

Eyebrows

This bitch dyed her eyebrows.

 Grade: F

Hey Hailey, can I borrow those safety goggles? I need them to protect my eyes from your hideous face and horrid clothing style.

Booty Game

Now, Halley’s booty game is fairly strong, I will admit that. There is a reason why her ass is plastered all over the internet and Jenna McDougall’s and Taylor Jardine’s (who I will talk about next) aren’t. It’s because she knows that it’s her one redeemable factor. Still a nice booty doe.

Grade: A-

Smell Prediction

Lol her vagina is probably so stanky. Plus she buys all her clothes at thrift shops where they sell ppl’s used clothes without washing them. Srsly, I wouldn’t ever go near her, not even for the novelty of meeting a celebrity. I have tinychatted with Andy Milonakis before and Selena Gomez drove by me in a limo once, I’ve already had my important brushes with fame. I don’t know who she hollers at when she’s tryin’ to fuck, but grading her here is the only time I’d ever give her the “D”.

Grade: D

Steve Klein isn’t the only New Found Glory guitarist with a poor taste in women.

Smile

I do believe that people are more attractive when they smile, but for her, that’s not saying much.

Grade: D+

They forgot to add “and disgusting”.

Final Grade: D-

And finally, last but definitely not least (“least” belongs rightfully to the lady up above of course)…

Taylor Jardine

Taylor Jardine, AKA one of the most beautiful women in musical history, sings for premier Hollistercore group “We Are The In Crowd”. To describe how I feel about Tay, adoration would be an understatement. I just love everything about her… her elegance, her style, her grace, her splendor, the list goes on and on. Just to warn you guys, I’m kinda obsessed, okay? Okay, maybe I’m VERY obsessed. But look at her, she’s friggin’ perfect!

Fashion Sense

Tay has one of the best fashion senses in the whole industry. Anything she puts on is certified cute as fuck.

                                                                      HOT!!

Hey Tay, can I join you on that bed? Is there room for 2?

I wish I was whatever she was drinking so that I could be sucked up into her cute little mouth.

She’s wearing a shirt that says Taylor gang, and her name is Taylor xD. So adorable!

Grade: A+

Eyebrows

It’s as if Taylor’s eyebrows were hand crafted by God himself. Notice all the fine details that went into shaping these beautiful works of art.

Grade: A+

Booty Game

I am personal friends with Alex Gaskarth and he told me that Tay’s booty game is off the hook. Basically, remember the video of that black guy hyping up pokemon? Replace “pokemon” with “Taylor Jardine’s ass”. That’s how he described it to me.

Grade: A+

Smell Prediction

I predict Taylor Jardine would smell like a dozen flower scented scratch-and-sniff stickers mixed with fresh linen mixed with vanilla soap mixed with a box of crayons. Except better than all those things.

Grade: A+

Smile

Taylor’s smile is beyond perfect. There’s not a word that you could even use to describe how beautiful Taylor’s smile is.

UGH.

omg

 
I can’t even…

Grade: A++

Final Grade: S-Rank/A+++/6 stars/God Tier/11 out of 10/It’s over 9,000

So there you have it. Taylor Jardine is by far the cutest specimen on earth and her beauty is matched by no one. I yearn for the day when I can finally meet her…

just gotta wait for the restraining order to be removed.

(not srs)

or am I?

Who do u think the cutest pop rock singer is? Where would u place each of them in a “kill, fuck, marry”? Do u think Jenna McDougall’s big teeth make her look like a cute bunny rabbit?

As regular readers of SYWH know, and as the above example illustrates painfully well, it is inescapable part of scene-life that seemingly all bands who were seen as ‘gay shit for homos/posers/scene kids’ at some point turn the corner and become not just accepted as tr00/real music but worshipped by the same aspie nerds who once hated them. I mean, who would have ever thought in 2009 we’d see the day when some IMN virgin would be calling me a poser for NOT being into BORN OF OSIRIS and AUGUST BURNS RED?!

That said, the tr00 transformation timeline is different for every band. For some it happens overnight (SUISIDE SILENCE), for others can take over a decade (WINDS OF PLAGUE). In this post, let’s try to guess how much longer the following bands will remain hated before they inevitably end up being embraced:

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

My guess: 2018. This band is what Real Music dorks/IMNs have always said they wanted: a no-bullshit, straight up metal band who can play their asses off. Also, they have a small amount of hardcore cred (BFFs with James from 18V and played some shows at the Showcase et al with those bands). The problem is that they are insanely popular (17 million fb likes; appeared in Call Of Duty, etc) and well, losers hate winners. Will have to wait until their popularity dies down a bit before their inferiority complex lets them like this band.

TDWP

My guess: 2016. Musically, they pretty much already sound like boring “brooding metalcore” that could come out on Deathwish (aside from the cleans which they’ll probably drop soon). They look like schizophrenic vagrants, so any “pretty boy” accusations are toothless. And nobody really gives a shit about the band anymore (675k views on this video in 6 months? Ouch), so it should be OK to like them relatively soon.

ALL TIME LOW

My guess: 2020. It’s gonna take a while for this one to happen. The band is huge, their fanbase is still 90% jailbait, and they show no signs of putting out an album that “showcases their love for Americana” or whatever. I know it seems impossible to think that ATL could ever be beloved by the likes of the Absolute Punk-neckbeard-pop punk police, but consider how much those same losers love BLINK-182, who were legit tween hearthrobs just 15 years ago. Or the fact that those kids worship fucking YELLOWCARD of all bands. It will happen, trust me. It always does.

FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH

My guess: 2015. Hard rock is obviously the flavor of the month, and while FFDP can be pretty cringey, they’ve also got some great #hardrock jams that make you wanna burn your GED and be like “fuck you, dad!!!!” Like SLIPKNOT before them, they’re a point of entry into the world of ‘aggressive music’ for the kids who are coming into it from the loserish-white-trash-kid-from-a-broken-family side of things (aka kids who for some unexplained reason were raised by their grandparents), and I’ve already heard some of the more advanced deathcore/metalcore kids admit to liking this band. I predict that they’ll approach SLIPKNOT levels of jockage by the end of the decade.

PIERCE THE VEIL

My guess: 2017. Although PTV gets a lot of attention from jailbait, the fact is that their music itself is actually kind of weird and a bit on the progressive side. On purely musical grounds, the same losers who fawn over overrated pretentious bunk like REFUSED and THE MARS VOLTA should be into this band, but they’re not allowed to at this point due to the ‘jb factor.’ Just need to give it a couple years until the memories of their little sisters’ Vic Fuentes posters fade away.