Averkiou

It’s hard not call Averkiou a shoegaze band. Their obsession with ethereal vocals and foot pedals is obvious in every track, but they also explore stranger, murkier waters in their premiere album “Throwing Sparks”. The album was difficult for the band to record, as their studio experience left them frustrated. Many band members quit because of the tumultuous affair. But after setting up a studio in their collective basement, Averkiou managed to birth a damn fine record and a career.

Averkiou will be playing FEST 8 in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

Assassinate the Scientist

Florida rockers Assassinate the Scientist have two loves: quirky low-rez artwork and quirky low-rez music. The D.I.Y. ethic is smeared all over them like a canned cheese on a hobo, but they smell better. I hope. The tunes mix the warm rock vocals of Muse and Paramore, spliced together with jagged punk rock monotones, and wrapped up with punchy riffs and a silliness that’s contagious. A young band, they’ve only been around since 2008 but are already touring extensively.

Assassinate the Scientist will be playing FEST 8 in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

Annabel

Soft rockers Annabel are sweet like high fructose corn syrup.

Annabel will be playing FEST 8 in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

Anchor Arms

Florida natives Anchor Arms have spent a long time building up community ties in their hometown of Gainsville, Florida. It wasn’t until 2007 that their penchant for slowly building and soaring alt-punk was noticed by aging rock star Jon Bon Jovi who took them on his US tour of that year. The tour opened up new doors for the band and now they are touring across the world and selling hundreds of records in Virgin Megastores across the world.

Anchor Arms will be playing FEST 8 in their hometown of Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

Algernon Cadwallader

Their name is pronounced “al-jur-non kad-wall-uh-der” - a strange name without obvious origins. This Philly punk band doesn’t perpetuate the rage of other hard rockers, but instead uses their high energy and rocking tunes to bring out the best in the listener. Long song titles like “Look Down (Because the Ground Is Easier to Understand and Doesn’t Take So Much Work to Figure Out But I’d Rather Not Know Where I’m Standing and Have An Idea of What Life Is All About)” betray an irreverence and love for fun uncommon in Philly rock. Album artwork is missing the skulls and violence common to the genre in favor of simple and colorful depictions of nature and dead guys. If you like punk rock but aren’t mad at much, this band is for you.

Algernon Cadwallader will be playing FEST 8 in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

A.N.S.

With little regard for convention, A.N.S. is a group of musicians from all across the country - Denton, New Brunswick, and Portland - who have come together to tour and record the sounds of madness inspired by classic punks like Black Flag and Suicidal Tendencies. Their breakneck touring schedule, which involves playing a show every night for two months, is powered by a loyal fanbase and D.I.Y. spirit beckoning from before the digital age. The band offers mail-order service for their vinyl EPs, LPs, and splits with other bands. They are now promoting their latest album, “Pressure Cracks”.

A.N.S. will be playing FEST 8 in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

A Wilhelm Scream

Hailed as the new kings of skate punk, A Wilhelm Scream has been one of the most conspicuously evolving band in the scene. Changing names multiple times and allowing their line-up to grow organically, A Wilhelm Scream has moved from post-grunge to ska punk to skate punk and on into a new sound defying easy categorization. They are named after the famous stock sound effect of a man screaming, used in  cowboy, adventure, and science fiction films. Unlike the “wilhelm scream” the band is not stock and is rarely the same twice. But just like the “wilhelm scream” this band will continue to be popular with people from all walks, and is well on their way to becoming one of the top skate punk bands in the nation.

A Wilhelm Scream will be joining other top punk bands for FEST 8, held in Gainsville, Florida this upcoming Halloween.

For more on FEST 8 check out TruePunk’s Guide to FEST 8

AFI

One of the most recognizable names in rock and roll, AFI took 12 years to achieve mainstream success. The members met and began playing in high school and released an EP before breaking up head off to college. The end.

Just kidding. After college AFI rejoined and mixed up their lineup again. Proving themselves a force in the studio as well as on the road, they assembled a catalog of seven studio album and tour extensively. Their upcoming album “Crash Love” will be hitting the stores this September.

Streetlight Manifesto

The name evokes something dark and revolutionary. Streetlights provide illumination in the darkness, to protect against would-be attackers that seek to catch you unawares. A manifesto is a philosophical compendium to provide insight and shed light on the truth, handed out freely on the street in peaceful rebellion. But both are also notorious for their limits. The shadows on the edge of a streetlight’s circle of protection are more menacing than the open night. And a manifesto is only pages long, unable to delve deeply into the topic at hand, only skimming the surface. Manifestos are meant to ignite rebellion, not provide the fuel.

Tomas Kalnoky rose to power in the world of ska as one of the driving creative forces behind the equally-powerfully named Catch 22 in their early years. This band would define the public image of the genre, and although they may not have invented ska, they inarguably came to represent the genre in the mainstream. Okay, maybe not inarguably. I’m sure the Mighty Mighty Bosstones would disagree. But they can go ahead and disagree - Catch 22 was God for a few years there. Their debut album, “Keasbey Nights,” was a raging success, and many of the songs on that album were written by Kalnoky. Unfortunately, Kalnoky discovered that he was not able to continue being in the band. Why? Only the original line-up of Catch 22 knows. But when Kalnoky left, he took half the band with him and forged a new band: Streetlight Manifesto.

Adopting members from another popular ska group, One Cool Guy, Streetlight Manifesto was a ska supergroup of epic proportions. Like all supergroups, the members’ previous successes drove their new project with little need to advertise or promote. Those who were interested in Catch 22 and One Cool Guy did not need to look far to find Streetlight Manifesto, and they began coming to shows. The band’s first full-length album, “Everything Goes Numb”, was the most logical progression from “Keasbey Nights”, and musically took the Catch 22 content to a darker, more sinister place. While many ska bands, like Reel Big Fish and Suburban Legends, are famous for being lighthearted and upbeat, “Everything Goes Numb” was an album deranged; themes of theft, suicide, oblivion, and violence played with the razor’s edge. Instead of blurting and popping, Streetlight Manifesto’s horns and brass are sharp, cutting, and pulse-pounding. The entire genre was turned on its head.

Streetlight Manifesto’s split from Catch 22 was not clean. Many fans and critics have pointed to lyrics from “Everything Goes Numb” songs, claiming that they are overt attacks on his former band mates’ characters. Other have pointed to Catch 22 songs as being evidence of the reverse. It is hard to tell, though, because the public is so very uncertain of why there is any bad blood between the two. But it is not hard to see that there has been some. When Victory Records announced that it was going to re-release the Catch 22 debut album “Keansey Nights” Kalnoky was not entirely pleased. He felt that his contributions to the album were what made it great - which is difficult to contend - and that his former band mates and label were butthumping him out of money (that’s right, I said butthumping - get over it!) So he went ahead and re-recorded the entire album and re-released it himself.

Perhaps the most bizarre aspect of Streetlight Manifesto’s legacy is their propensity to being robbed. While asleep in a hotel room in Orlando, Florida, the band’s van was broken into and stripped clean. As if that weren’t bad enough, the trailer that had been hitched to the van was de-hitched and hauled away in its entirety. When the group woke up the next morning they had lost all of their instruments, all of their equipment, and a lot of their money and personal belongings. All in all they were down an astounding $80,000. I’ll put that into words for more effect: Eighty thousand dollars. Luckily they were able to scrounge together enough to keep playing shows. But then, while in Paris, France during the 2005 riots - only a few months after the last robbery - the band’s rental cars were broken into and the last of their expensive equipment stolen. The saddest part was the theft of the 24-track recording device the band had been using to record their shows on the tour. Some Parisian criminal now owns the only copy of the most valuable ska recordings ever.

But this wasn’t about to stop the band. They’ve released a new album on Victory Records called “Somewhere in Between”, and they’re heading out to the Vans 2009 Warped Tour - just for you!

Rancid

Re-igniting America’s interest in pure punk rock in the 1990s, Rancid has become one of the few supergroups in history to make waves in music in and of themselves. Forming from the ashes of Operation Ivy, Tim Armstrong and Matt Freeman tried a few failed ska and hardcore projects before they struck upon the punk rock sound that would make them famous. Their first EP, released on Lookout! Records, got the attention of Bad Religion’s label Epitaph. It was the success of their first three albums on Epitaph Records - their self-titled LP, 1994’s “Let’s Go” which debuted Lars Fredriksen as Rancid’s second guitar player, and the incredibly popular “…And Out Come the Wolves” - that got them touring extensively alongside big names like the Offspring .

Little known to many is that Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day co-wrote the song “Radio” by Rancid. He showed interest in becoming the lead singer of Rancid, but the band turned him down not because he wasn’t up to snuff, but because they believed Billie Joe should pursue Green Day further.

Although Rancid has gone on hiatus before and their members have gone off to orchestrate and perform in side-projects (such as Lars Fredriksen and the Bastards) the band is still going strong. Their latest album, “Let The Dominoes Fall”, promises to be their most exciting release to date. Rancid may have become a staple of punk rock, but they are not afraid of reaching past the genre - the new album will feature an organ performance from R&B legend Booker T. Jones proving once again that Rancid has no intention of ceasing their reinvention of the genre.

Next Page »