The Swellers

Contest Win the new Set Your goals album.

Here is your chance to win the new album by Set Your Goals which will be released July 21st.

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1st prize: The new CD, Poster and T-shirt
2nd prize: The new CD
3rd prize: The New CD

Set Your Goals

Formed in 2004 in the Bay Area (California) Set Your goals have been rocking the pop punk scene with North American Tours.

The band released their first self titled album in 2004 just a few months after forming with Stright on Records. With over 2 years of tours the band was able to pick up fans all over North America and began growing in popularity. The band signed up with Eulogy Records and re-releasedtheir self titled album as “Reset” in 2006. 2 months after this release the band put out a whole new album again with Eulogy titled “Mutiny!”.

Over the next year the band did a follow up tours promoting the new album and had the chance to play with some big name bands as Anti-flag, Alexisonfire and Big D and the Kids Table. The band also released a number of re-releases of songs from their 2 previous albums on “”unk Goes Acoustic 2” and “Punk Goes Crunk” both albums through Fearless Records.

In 2008 Set Your Goals despite issues (unknown to us) the band bought out their contact and signed with Epitaph Records. Their new release “This Will Be the Death of Us” which is planned for April of 2009 will be released on Epitaph Records and will be followed up with a 2 month North America tour.

Set Your goals has had a number of members over the last 5 years with several different guitar and bass players.

The current line up concists of:
Matt Wilson – Vocals
Jordan Brown – Vocals
Joe Saucedo – Bass
Michael Ambrose – Drums
Audelio Flores, Jr – Guitar
Daniel Coddaire – Guitar

LINKS

Featured on True Punk

Set Your Goals on MySpace

Set Your Goals

Bay Area California pop punk band Set Your Goals have been rocking with crowds and fans through out North Ameria and the world since their beginnings in 2004. Though the years Set Your Goals have been on tou with the likes of New Found Glory, Paramore, Gorilla Biscuits and starting this month Polar Bear Club Four Year Strong and Fireworks. You might have also had a chance to see them play in the Warped Tour the last few years. In the five years Set Your Goals has been a band they’ve already achieved what most bands only dream about by touring the world, playing with some of the biggest bands in the punk rock and achieved massive credibility among their wide-spread legion of fans.

So what separates Set Your Goals from all the other bands you might ask? For one, they have no gimmicks. They don’t need to wear flashy neon, dress up like white kids at a 50 Cent concert or sing about getting wasted to melt their listeners’ faces. Instead they channel positivity through their lyrics and let the music speak for itself. The band is changing the game and blazing trails with their unique style that’s influenced by ‘90’s skate punk and melodic hardcore. No trendy haircuts or cheesy breakdowns here, just straight up head bobbling pop-punk like it’s never been played.

Avoiding the sophomore slump like it was the plague, Set Your Goals come out guns-a-blazing on their new album, This Will Be The Death Of Us, the follow-up to their fan-coveted debut Mutiny. The band has always had one foot in the hardcore world and the other in the pop-punk world, so naturally haters will speculate that the band has lost their hardcore edge or their style has changed, but the music begs to differ. This Will Be The Death Of Us is balls-to-the-wall non-stop furious pop-punk like only Set Your Goals knows how to do.

INTERVIEWS

Interview with Set Your goals

News

New album Release
Upcoming Tour Dates

From the galloping drum beat and Joe Saucedo’s driving bassline to the ripping riffs of the title track, which features guest vocals from Vinnie Caruana from I Am the Avalanche, detractors will be discredited from the get-go. “look closer,” is a soaring, fast paced sing-along and “the fallen” is a scorching punk rock track showcasing duel vocalists Matt Wilson and Jordan Brown’s flawless delivery as they trade off singing duties.

While This Will Be The Death Of Us has the definitive Set Your Goals sound, they aren’t afraid to keep it fresh and try new things. For example, “gaia bleeds (make way for man),” featuring Turmoil’s Jon Gula, takes things to a whole new level with Audelio Flores and Dan Coddaire’s Motorhead-ish riffs and Mike Ambrose’s tightly knit double kick over gang vocals that will blow the doors off your mom’s grocery getter, and the soon to be fan favorite “the few that remain,” an insanely addictive song that features longtime Set Your Goals fan Hayley Williams of Paramore adding some gutsy vocals. The band finishes off the album with the 90’s skate punk influenced “our ethos: a legacy to pass on” featuring fist-pumping guest vocals from New Found Glory’s Chad Gilbert.

This may only be the band’s second album, but you wouldn’t know it. Set Your Goals has already proven their longevity and dedication to the music through relentless touring and their classic debut, and with the release of This Will Be The Death Of Us it further cements them as one of the pop-punk greats.

Buy the albums

LINKS

Set Your Goals on MySpace

Epitaph Records

Band profile on TruePunk

Set Your Goals Tour Dates

With the release of their new album “This Will Be The Death Of Us” which hits the record stores July 21st the band will be hitting the venues of North America to promote the new album.

the band will be playing with Four Year Strong, Fireworks and Polar Bear Club.

Tour Dates
13 July – Pop’s – Sauget, IL (w/Fireworks)
15 July – The Picador – Iowa City, IA (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
16 July – Metro – Chicago, IL (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
17 July – Magic Stick – Detroit, MI (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
18 July – Reverb – Toronto, ON (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
19 July – Underworld – Montreal, QC (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
20 July – The Station – Portland, ME (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
22 July – Northern Lights – Albany, NY (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
23 July – The Stone Pony – Asbury Park, NJ (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
24 July – Toad’s Place – New Haven, CT (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
25 July – The Palladium – Worcester, MA (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
26 July – the Crazy Donkey – Farmingdale, NY (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
27 July – The Town Ballroom – Buffalo, NY (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
28 July – Peabody’s Downunder – Cleveland, OH (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
29 July – Mr. Smalls Theater – Pittsburgh, PA (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
30 July – Otto Bar – Baltimore, MD (w/Four Year Strong, Fireworks)
31 July – Canal Club (Downstairs) – Richmond, VA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
1 Aug – New Brookland Tavern – Columbia, SC (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
2 Aug – Visulite Theatre – Charlotte, NC (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
4 Aug – Off the Wagon – Montgomery, AL (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
5 Aug – Rocketown – Nashville, TN (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
6 Aug – Vinyl (GA) – Atlanta, GA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
7 Aug – State Theatre – St. Petersburg, FL (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
8 Aug – Culture Room – Ft. Lauderdale, FL (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
9 Aug – The Social – Orlando, FL (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
11 Aug – The High Ground – New Orleans, LA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
12 Aug – Java Jazz – Houston, TX (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
13 Aug – Emo’s – Austin, TX (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
14 Aug – The Max – Dallas, TX (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
15 Aug – The Marquee – Tulsa, OK (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
16 Aug – Launchpad – Albuquerque, NM (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
17 Aug – The Clubhouse Music Venue – Phoenix, AZ (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
19 Aug – Soma – San Diego, CA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
20 Aug – Glasshouse – Pomona, CA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
21 Aug – Slim’s – San Francisco, CA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
22 Aug – Satyricon – Portland, OR (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
23 Aug – El Corazon – Seattle, WA (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
24 Aug – The Venue – Boise, ID (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
25 Aug – Murray Theater – Salt Lake City, UT (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)
26 Aug – Cervantes – Denver, CO (w/Four Year Strong, Polar Bear Club, Fireworks)

Set Your Goals

Interview by Carlo Gironi | carlo@staff.truepunk.com | with Matt Wilson of Set Your Goals.

Hello! How are things going with you and Set Your Goals in 2006?
Things are going great! We’ve got our debut full-length, entitled “Mutiny!”, coming out july 11th through Eulogy Recordings. We also just shot a video for the title track, which you can check out online at www.altpress.com/media. Making that was a lot of fun for us.

I read you’re currently on tour with Crime in Stereo: how is it going? Funny stories to tell?
We actually finished that tour already but it was a lot of fun. Those guys are good friends of ours and towards the end of tour we took a day off to shoot the video and Kristian and Alex both had roles in the video. Right now we’re finishing up our u.s. tour with Ignite and then we head over to Europe for a couple of weeks so we’re pretty stoked about that.

I don’t know if you feel it, but surfing on the internet, I think you can feel the buzz about your band. I don’t think it’s just hype. So, can you feel it and what do you expect from your upcoming album “Mutiny”?
I’d be lying if I said I didn’t notice a little bit of buzz about us on the web. I check the Bridge 9 Records board frequently and I can’t help but notice the threads about us on there. As far as the record goes, I am very proud of it and I feel that it blows the demo EP away. Hopefully our listeners will feel the same way.

You are a very young band: you formed in 2004 and released a demo, an EP in April 2006 and this LP that is going to come out on Eulogy is your first full album. How do you feel about it? Would you describe it to the people who do not know you?
We actually originally released the demo EP in 2004 and have been touring off of that alone for almost 2 years now. It was only recently re-released through Eulogy, but it will be nice to get out there and play some new songs for people. Whenever people ask to hear our music I always play them the new songs because I am the most proud of those. As far as describing our sound, I try to leave that up to the listener. I feel that to classify us in a genre would be limiting, and I wouldn’t know how to do it anyway, so I just don’t. I feel that we exist in a grey area somewhere inside the realm of hardcore punk and rock, with a pop influence.

I suppose you take your name from a CIV’s album (is it right?); you will soon support Gorilla Biscuits on their tour. How important are the old school hardcore roots for your band? I mean, you are very young and I might think you heard more to The Movielife and Lifetime that 80′s bands, so, what are your main influences?
That’s correct, we did originally take our name from CIV’s first record, but our name has taken on a deeper meaning for the band since its inception. Our roots are the most important thing to me and it means the world to me to be playing these shows. Without GB this band would not exist. I’ve been into punk and hardcore since I was 11 or 12 and I am 23 now and they have been my favorite hardcore band since the first time I heard them so obviously they are a huge influence to me.

On the reissue of your EP, you put a Jawbreaker cover, “Do You Still Hate Me?”. Do you have an Emo side? Do you know your favourite bands all broke up? Those are my favourite bands too and that made me sad.
Hahaha I guess you could say that everyone has an Emo side whether they like to admit it or not. I do know that many of my favourite bands have broken up but I’ve seen what happens when good bands overstay their welcome in the music world and it isn’t pretty. I think that maybe the reason some bands remain legendary is because they broke up before passing their prime. So in that respect, maybe it was for the better in some cases.

Musically, you play melodic punk rock, and on your site it says fans of New Found Glory, Lifetime, Kid Dynamite, The Movielife will possibly like your band. Do you fuse pop with hardcore? What’s your goal?
I guess you could say that we fuse pop with hardcore. We play music that we enjoy listening to and our goal is just to have fun and hopefully someday we will be able to survive doing it. To make something I love (like doing this band) my job would be a dream come true.

From the point of view of the production, whom did you work with? And how long did it take to write, record and everything?
We recorded with Barrett Jones for 3 weeks in Seattle in February of this year. We’d been writing and re-writing the songs for about a year.We are, however, a very lazy band and though I probably shouldn’t be saying this, we were very unprepared and wrote more of the material in the studio than we should have hahaha

Will you have any b-sides or bonus tracks for the new disc? On the Eulogy site I saw you will also have a picture disc on another record label.
We recorded a Gorilla Biscuits song for a Revelation compilation that we hope to release with the Japanese import version of the record. We will be releasing the vinyl through our friends at Double or Nothing records.

Speaking of Eulogy, how did you get in touch with the guys at the label? Do you think you will work with them for many albums?
We are good friends with the Warriors and they brought us out on some of our first tours. Once a bit of buzz began to circulate about the EP, we were approached by a number of labels. Eulogy told the Warriors that they were interested and although we were offered more money from some of the other labels, we felt the most secure with Eulogy because we trusted them the most. We’re happy with eulogy and we hope to continue to work with them as long as possible.

Lately I saw a lot of “melodic hardcore” band turned their music off and started playing pop punk or so called “nu emo” or that kind of goth stuff put out by Victory Records and such. Do you think you will be able to bring the fury and the sweat of a positive hardcore show to the kids out there?
I hope so! Our focus is to just have fun when we play and to get the crowd into it and having fun as well. We don’t need make-up or screamy-singy parts about “broken hearts” to do that. We hope to leave kids with a good feeling after they see us live, not angry or suicidal haha

Is Set Your Goals a special band in any sense? Like, are you straight edge or do you follow some youth positive beliefs as it was in the 80′s with bands as Gorilla Biscuits, Youth Of Today, Shelter, etc?
Most of us are edge but we are not a straight edge band by any means.Half of us are also vegetarian so yes we do follow some of the same belief structures as early youth crew bands such as YOT and GB. As far as being positive, I have learned in life that there is nothing to gain from being a negative person so to do so is counterproductive.

What are your future projects? Will you be on the whole Warped Tour? Will you tour elsewhere and with whom? Any plans to come to Europe?
We hope to get on warped tour maybe next summer as we were too busy to do it this year. Like I said we will be in Europe in less than a week, we’ll be doing some dates out there with the Steal.

Any final comment? Things I should have asked? Things you want to say?

Yes, please check out our friends in Alcatraz and Gunsmoke, two awesome bands from the SF bay area. Don’t smoke.