Thanks to Adam Q. for awaring us to this

> waiting patiently in my neon bunker for easycore to rise from the ashes, reborn like a proud majestic phoenix
> monitoring radio scanner for signs of life
> detects a faint but clear signal from SETTLE YOUR SCORES crackling across the airwaves
> sounds exactly like a generic ez band from 2009 that would have been on xeasycorex
> shoots a signal flare into the sky, so glad not to wander this wasteland alone anymore

On the brighter side, the song is fucking awesome and sounds exactly like prime ESCAPE THE FATE– looks like Ronald is even growing his scene hair out again! In b4 they switch to Myspace as their “exclusive social media partner” and the revival is in full effect.

credit: aust_elle

if u will recall, i have been forecasting FUNKYCORE as The Next Big Thing for several months now. while that was a legitimate, serious prediction, in the interest of comedy i took the argument to what i thought was an absurd extreme, predicting that soon Real Hardcore kids would be jocking DOG EAT DOG. of course, i never actually thought that would happen… FAITH NO MORE? absolutely. LIVING COLOUR? Sure, why not. But even in my wildest dreams did i actually think kids would cite DOG EAT DOG as ‘legends.’ :/

stay ahead of the curve and be the first Real Hardcore kid to get down with SPIN DOCTORS! (note: if ur into Chad Sexton/John Stanier style drumming definitely don’t sleep on this band, the drummer is legit sick. check out those ghost notes.)

For the first time in my entire life, I sort of wish I still lived in Ohio so I could go to this one-off reunion show from one of the best OG easycore bands, my good friends CITY LIGHTS. They just announced this show an hour or two ago, and all the dorks in the Defend Easycore Group are losing their shit. I have two thoughts:

1. As always, I have mixed feelings when people are excited about reunions. On the one hand, of course I am stoked that people are into CITY LIGHTS in 2015. On the other hand, it sure would have been nice for people to support them when they were actually an active band, but nobody gave a shit and they struggled to get 50 kids to come out to their shows. Lesson: don’t wait until bands break up to support them!
2. I expect full credit for CITY LIGHTS and FIGHT FAIR’s 2015 status as ‘legends of ez,’ since I actually did rep them when they were around, playing sad VFW shows with crappy bands that even less people cared about (FRESHMAN 15, I’m looking at you). TFW u were a REAL neon fan, before it was cool to be one *steamnose emoji*

For maximum effect, they really need to bring this version of CITY LIGHTS back:

A couple thoughts in no particular order:

• Bummed to see them fall into the “old man screams at cloud” trap– or more specifically, the even more awkward SENSES FAIL/BAYSIDE version which is “former scene band gets up on their high horse and complains about Kids These Days.” In b4 they make some embarrassing facebook rant about selfies and/or kids using their phones at shows
• LOL @ shoehorning their super-scene splattery logo into the tr00 aesthetic. And WTF does some desaturated photo of a beach have to do with the lyrics?!
• On the bright side, the song is really good and this album is going to be their best since “Skip School”

Friends, I’m feeling pretty good these days– like a homesteader who survived the long, brutal winter with only 1 or 2 of his cattle freezing to death, looking out across his farm and seeing the first signs of spring poking through the frost. After a couple years of dull, crappy, greyscale tr00ness, we are starting to see signs of #ez life: solid new releases from NEW FOUND GLORY and HIT THE LIGHTS, sick new ez bands like ALIVE IN STANDBY and CRUNKASAURUS REX, and this– a new release from the godfathers of #ezcrab that sounds like it’s going to be really really good.

Like most of you, I was pretty nervous when they said that they were going for a “more mature” direction, because that usually means mustaches, work boots, and acoustic guitars = DO NOT WANT. But if this clip is any indication, they were either lying or kidding themselves because this is pure, vintage #ezcrab. Stoked!

in b4 someone finds Jay’s secret tumblr which is full of superwholock gifs, TSSF lyrics over desaturated pictures of forests, and photos of tattoo-model girls in huf socks.

he even included the fucking hashtag. dudes, they are definitely ready 2

As “the scene’s cool older brother,” one of my dreams is that you will avoid making the same painful, stupid mistakes that I did in my teens and twenties. My hope is that by telling you about all the dumb shit I’ve done over the years, you can learn from MY mistakes instead of your own. Of course, one of the cruel ironies is that when you are young enough to avoid making these mistakes, you also think that you know everything so you don’t listen to people when they try to help you, so this is probably pointless… but for whatever it’s worth, here are a couple things that I really, really, really hope you consider and take to heart– you could save yourself years of pain.

It can and WILL happen to you
You know how old people are always lecturing you about how you young kids think you’re invincible? Well, they are right. That’s totally how you feel– you think that it won’t happen to you, that you can tempt fate but the consequences only happen to other people. Well, let me tell you, you’re wrong. It WILL happen to you. Fuck enough random dirty girls/guys and you WILL get an STD. Get in enough fights and you WILL go to jail. Do enough drugs and you WILL end up an addict. You can tempt fate for a while– years even– before your number comes up, but I promise you that if you keep rolling the dice, eventually you will get burned.

The really scary part is that you don’t see it coming until it’s too late… you don’t realize that this time you REALLY fucked up until you see the lights of the police car, the doctor tells you that you have herpes, etc. And it only takes a second to make a mistake that can take years and years to dig yourself out of. Trust me, do the smart thing and don’t play with fire in the first place because you WILL get burned, and you will instantly want to kick your own ass for doing something that you KNEW was fucking stupid.

Which brings me to my second piece of advice…

THINK before you act/talk
I’m sure it’s funny hearing this from me, someone who has said countless dumb, regrettable things over the years. If I had a dollar for everytime I did or said something, only to IMMEDIATELY get that sinking feeling in my stomach like “well fuck… that wasn’t the right move,” I could buy like a fucking small planet or something.

I know sometimes it’s hard to know what the right thing to do is, which is why I like to use what they call the “TV test.” Basically, imagine that you are being broadcast on live national TV, and act accordingly. If the thing you are about to do or say isn’t something you would want to be seen on TV, then it’s probably a bad idea.

For example, would you be proud to have the TV audience see you spend 2 hours debating on some forum about whether [band] is REAL pop-punk? Would you want them to see you getting shitfaced on a Tuesday night when you have a paper due the next morning? Would you want to be that guy on TV who loses his temper at work and storms out over some trivial bullshit?

Hard works pays off (but sometimes it takes a really long time)
The tough part about “doing the right thing” is that it never pays off as quickly as you want it to, so it feels like you’re not getting anywhere, like you are grinding and grinding and grinding but still staying stationary. For example, when I was in college and taking 16 credits and working full time, getting up at 5am and not coming home until 9pm. I did this for years, and it felt like I was on an endless treadmill and it was so so discouraging. But I stuck with it, I graduated 5 years ago, and I literally make twice as much money as I did when I graduated.

I think it’s all about adjusting the way you look at things. Important shit takes YEARS to achieve, so don’t look for daily progress because it just isn’t gonna be there. If you compare today to yesterday, it will just bum you out because it will feel like you haven’t gotten anywhere. Instead, compare today to 6 months ago, 1 year ago, or 5 years ago– THEN you will see how far you have really come and it will feel awesome.

Whatever you do, don’t be that fucking lame dude who quits the minute things get hard. I PROMISE you that if you grind hard enough and long in the right direction, it WILL pay off. Maybe not as fast as you want, and maybe not in exactly the way you thought it would, but it WILL pay off.

Don’t look for the right girl, focus on being the right guy
I think this one is pretty self-explanatory, but it has to be said. I feel super bad for wifeable girls in their early 20s (and contrary to popular belief there are lots of them) because holy shit guys in their 20s suck. I was way more interested in collecting video games, posting on the Relapse forum, and complaining about my job than I was in making my girlfriend happy, and what kind of decent girl is going to put up with that? Instead of pissing and moaning about how you can’t find a qt gf, take a good look in the mirror and ask yourself if you’re the guy that your dream girl would want to be with– if you are reading this, chances are that you’re not lol (sorry, but it’s true).

credit: LAUGHAPALOOZA on Face Book

I write this with a heavy heart, because this news means that yet another one of my people (old hxc guys) has become a victim of Kevin Seconds Syndrome. KSS is a tragic and irreversible condition that strikes as many as 9/10 guys in hardcore bands after the age of 30.

The first sign of KSS is going on an angry, butthurt rant about Kids These Days, which Anthony did a few months back when he lashed out at “bullshit Warped Tour bands.” The final stage of KSS drives its victims to start some kind of weird, awful side project that revolves around them talking about how they’ve “always been heavily into” some genre of old ppl music like swing, bluegrass, or most commonly “americana.” Anthony’s descent into reggae is uncommon, but not unheard of– expect him (a 32 year-old white guy from Queens) to start lecturing people about what is and is not REAL reggae as the disease takes complete control of him.

Suddenly AARON WEST & THE ROARING TWENTIES don’t seem so bad…

they just need some red skinny ties to go full ALESANA. and actually now that i think about it, the guy on the right kind of looks like some random character from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure

credit: Gabrial C.

If you are reading this, chances are that you didn’t exactly grow up in a family full of financial wizards. I was raised by a single mother on welfare, so our idea of “financial planning” was rationing out how much powdered milk we could drink before our next trip to the food bank. There were many sucky things about growing up that way, but one of the worst is that I never learned how money works and what I should do as far as personal finance goes. The good news is that it’s actually pretty simple once you understand the basics.

I get a lot of questions about this stuff on Tumblr, so I figured I would outline the basics here in terms that people who have wasted their youth on music will understand. If you are an expert in this stuff please understand that this is just the very basics, and I am leaving out lots and lots of details for the sake of brevity.

401(k)s, IRAs, mutual funds, stocks, etc
You have probably heard all these terms and have a vague idea of what they mean, but what it boils down to is this (in hardcore terms): think of a 401k or IRA as a crate, and think of stocks, mutual funds, etc as the records you put in it. A 401k or IRA is basically just a savings account except you you can’t take the money out until you are 59.5 years old. There are some other details but don’t worry about those for now. Just think of it as a big milk crate which you can fill with different kinds of investments (like choosing what records to put in your crate).

Just like there is a nearly endless amount of different pressings, colors, limited editions, and other variations of records for dorks to obsess over, there is an insanely massive amount of different investment vehicles: stocks, bonds, CDs, mutual funds, and zillions more. It gets SUPER complicated, but the goods news is that you don’t need to worry about it. In the same way as I would tell you to stop wasting your time tracking down obscure colored vinyl versions of crappy, over-hyped bands whose peak will be opening 2 shows for SUBURBAN SCUM, you really don’t need to think about any of those obscure and complex investment vehicles. Do NOT feel like you need to fuck around buying shares of individual companies and try to flip them for a profit. You will almost certainly lose money this way.

The power of index funds: ff you invested $1 in an index fund in 1984, today you would have $12. Pretty fucking cool, huh??

If you are investing for your retirement, IMO your best option is something called index funds. Essentially, index funds are a way of investing in EVERY stock on the market, which is a good thing for lots of reasons, in particular because it means that you aren’t dependent on the future of any one individual company. Think of it like this: instead of trying to flip merch from one specific band, you’re investing in merch flipping as a whole– as long as Belgians exist, you’re sure to make money!

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH THIS INFO: If your employer offers a 401k, make sure that you are enrolled and taking advantage of any matching programs they have (it’s literally free money). If they don’t, start your own IRA through someone like Fidelity.

If you’re 25 and put away $500 a month until you’re 65, you can very easily have a million dollars when you retire

Compound interest
This involves a little math, but it’s really important to understand so pay attention! In a nutshell, compound interest is simply the idea that you earn interest on interest, which is the key to how investments grow over time. Read more about it here, but to put it in hardcore terms think about it like this: once a band gets a little hype (*cough ANGEL DU$T cough*) it snowballs and they get hype on top of hype and all of a sudden they are the scene’s favorite band. Hype builds on itself and creates more hype, interest builds on itself and creates more interest (where interest = money).

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO WITH THIS INFO: Put away money every month and leave it there! You literally do not have to do anything else, at least not for decades when you might need to move things into super-safe investment vehicles likes CDs.

Yep, that’s right: it would take over ELEVEN FUCKING YEARS to pay off that $5k if you just make the minimum payment!

Note that the same ideas about compound interest apply in reverse to debt, especially credit cards. Credit cards are BAD BAD BAD NEWS, and you should use them very sparingly. As you can see from the diagram above, if you rack up a lot of credit card debt, it can be reallllly hard to get out from under it, especially if you only make the minimum monthly payment.

THE BOTTOM LINE: The most important thing is that you get started on this as early as possible, and simply put money away every month and forget about it. If you aren’t sure how to proceed, call up the folks at Fidelity, Vanguard, etc and they will talk you through it (I personally like Fidelity’s web interface a lot better but it’s not super important who you go with). Even if you can only put away $50 a month, that’s ok– just do SOMETHING.

The good news is that investing is actually pretty simple– don’t be fooled by the E-Trade commercials with all the fancy charts and graphs and stuff like that, those are just to trick idiots into daytrading away all their money (daytrading is almost universally recognized as a really bad idea). You do NOT need to know about “the market” or any of that, just like there is no need for you to know what the latest flavor-of-the-week hypecore band is on Tumblr. Stick with the basics and you will be just fine!

Again, this is an EXTREMELY broad and simple overview and I definitely encourage you to read more. Investopedia is my personal favorite site for all this stuff. If you’re more advanced then check out the Bogleheads forum, it’s really great.

It’s kind of amazing that SYWH is now 6 years old, and as such has been around long enough to see the trends change a few times. Back when I started this thing, BROKENCYDE were at their peak of buzz, OF MICE & MEN were a brand new band best known for their LADY GAGA cover, and easycore was the dominant flavor of pop-punk. Then as we all know, the tr00nami hit, washing away MySpace, neon, major-key breakdowns and everything else we loved, replacing it with a sea of black-and-grey merch, braying donkey vocals, and sadboi bullshit.

But friends, WE MADE IT! We knew if we just kept the faith that this day would come, and here it is: tr00 is definitely on the way out, and fun is BACK in pop-punk. Don’t believe me? Think how long it’s been since anyone gave a shit about MAN OVERBOARD, CITIZEN, TRANSIT and the other tr00 hype bands of 2012. Seems like a different world, doesn’t it??

Don’t get me wrong, tr00 is still here, but it’s dying. Think of this as a transitional year like 2011, when all the crabcore bands were at their peak but clearly about to take a fall. Tr00 is still a force to be reckoned with, but right beneath the surface is an ez/fun revival about to boil over. Mark your calendars so you can answer the question, “Where were YOU when tr00 died??”

Supporting evidence:

Exhibit 1: Perhaps the most obvious and meaningful example is FOUR YEAR STRONG returning to their easycore roots after putting out a bunch of crappy rock albums that nobody liked. Given that FYS were one of the main reasons easycore died in the first place, it is a very significant move. On the one hand you could make fun of them for transparently caving into fan demands, but on the other hand it’s kind of cool and I wish more bands would have this kind of customer service!

A few years ago FYS wrote a butthurt song called “Fairweather Fan” about how if ur a REAL fan, u wouldn’t ask them to play breakdowns and synth parts. Fast forward to 2015 and they are embracing the same fans with open arms. Beggars can’t be choosers, I guess.

Exhibit 2: Just a couple years ago, you could charitably describe NECK DEEP as “The British TSSF,” but their new album is pure hollistercore goodness, like if I CALL FIVES were still around (and people actually cared about them). Or actually, now that I think about it, like a slightly tr00 version of SIMPLE PLAN lol. In the same way as FYS are kind of the torchbearer’s of the last generation of pop-punk, ND are one of the hotter commodities in the new generation, so it is noteworthy to see this happening on both ends of the pop-punk spectrum.

Exhibit 3: Speaking of hollistercore and americaneaglecore, this STATE CHAMPS song and video would not be at all out of place playing on the monitor in the back of either of those stores while some cute, slightly-slutty-in-all-right-ways mainstream girl shops for a crop top to go with her new white jeans. I feel like this is indicative of what to expect from the next wave of a pop-punk, a weird-but-awesome combination of tr00 and mallpunk.

Exhibit 4: Lots of newer mid-level/up-and-coming bands playing stuff that sounds straight out of 2008/2009 like SEASONS CHANGE (above), BROADSIDES, SETTLE YOUR SCORES, and so forth. Basically, this is the default template for new bands on No Sleep/Pure Noise/etc.

Exhibit 5: If you’ve ever had the misfortune of looking at the “Defend Easycore” group on Facebook, you know that it’s about 3,000 annoying tryhards who basically just parrot memes that me and Alex Bigman made up years ago. And it’s full of new bands like this one who are all tripping over themselves to be validated as “ez.” Beyond embarrassing, yes, but also solid evidence that the next wave of bands are going to be more 2008 than 2012.

i hope it smells like a mix of tanning oil and that victoria’s secret citrus spray that girls spray in the bathroom after they go #2. they think that it actually covers up the smell of the poop, when in reality it just smells like a mix of fake orange scent and poop and it’s somehow even worse than just the smell of their poop by itself.

I liked them better when they sounded like LINKIN PARK