My favourite bands are coming back to life and I love it

My late teens and early 20s have been a formative period for my musical taste. It was back then when I started listening to hardcore/punk rock and its derivatives such as metalcore and, most importantly of all, post-hardcore. The latter is a broad genre and many bands have received a post-hardcore label, but my top favourites are Alexisonfire¹ and From Autumn to Ashes.

From my perspective, years between 2003 and 2005 feel like a golden period of music. If I were to make a list of great albums released in those years, I could easily pick at least fifty. Sadly, as time went on, most of the bands I liked either officially disbanded or silently went on an indefinite hiatus. Reasons were many: starting a family and living a life, working on another musical project, or sometimes an argument within a band that made former friends part their ways. This always made me sad, but I learned to move on and just enjoy the old recordings.

But in recent years I am seeing a reverse trend: many bands that were at their peak 20 years ago are now re-forming and recording new music. I am not sure why that is happening, though the collective loneliness and uncertainty of the pandemic seems to have been a contributing factor in at least some of the cases. In this post, I want to highlight three new records from the last two years that have been extremely pleasant surprises for me. Perhaps you will enjoy them too.

Intermission: Bandcamp is doing music distribution the right way

I like buying physical album releases, but since I don’t have enough space to store all the music that I listen to, I also like the idea of digital distribution. However, execution of that idea is often poor, either because of DRM or because music is being provided as a service. In both cases, one does not receive ownership of what one pays for. To me, that is unacceptable.

Enter Bandcamp.

Bandcamp is an online music distribution platform, that truly sells music - both in digital form and on physical media. If you purchase an album or a track you get to download it DRM-free in any of the most popular audio formats (MP3, FLAC, OGG, WAV, AAC, ALAC, AIFF). Importantly, Bandcamp also allows you to listen to albums for free before making a purchase. Hence, most links in this post will lead you to Bandcamp.

In the past year, I’ve fallen in love with Bandcamp and now use it to make almost all of my music purchases². Bandcamp isn’t yet as big and popular as Spotify, so not all bands can be found there. Luckily for me, the ones I care about are mostly there.

Anyway, let’s get to the music.

Otherness by Alexisonfire

Alexisonfire is a post-hardcore band from Canada. They are one of my favourite bands and I can’t help but truly appreciate their official website address, theonlybandever.com. The band released four full-length albums between 2001 and 2008. They disbanded in 2010 and the members went to play in various other bands (Gallows, City And Colour, Black Lungs). If I were to pick Alexisonfire’s best album, I would have a hard time deciding between Watch Out! and Crisis.

In June 2022 Alexisonfire released a new album called Otherness. It wasn’t entirely unexpected since in 2019 the band released two new songs, Familiar Drugs and Complicit, followed by one more song, Season Of The Flood, in early 2020.

One characteristic thing about Alexisonfire is that each of their albums maintains the band’s characteristic style, but at the same time has its own uniqueness that sets it apart. This is also true for Otherness, with the album being noticeably calmer and slower than the earlier ones. While I prefer faster music, Otherness is a real joy to listen to. I also appreciate the band experimenting with new sounds, such as in the song Dark Night Of The Soul. If I were to recommend one song from Otherness it would be Reverse The Curse.

I also highly recommend Alexisonfire’s House of Strombo concert on YouTube. It is under 40 minutes and contains music from all periods of their career.

Endless by Leiah

Leiah is an emo band from Sweden, that released four records (EP + three albums) between 1999 and 2003 and then went completely silent. Note that when I say “emo” I don’t mean the kind of emo that became popular mainstream in the mid-late 2000s. Rather, Leiah follows in the footsteps of bands such Sunny Day Real Estate or Mineral. While Leiah was never at the top of my favourite bands, they are certainly a band that I like and enjoy listening to. Especially in winter.

Leiah was always a band I found quite cryptic. For long, long years there was no information about them available online: no Wikipedia page, no social media, nothing available on the streaming services, no online search results. It was as if the band never existed. Things changed in January 2018, when the band opened an Instagram account, released remastered versions of their first three albums, and went on a tour in 2019. I wasn’t aware of this return to activities and only learned about it when Leiah released their new album, called Endless, in January 2023. As such, it took me completely by surprise - a very pleasant surprise, I must add.

Endless is 39 minutes long and features ten songs. The music is similar in style to Leiah’s earlier releases, but at the same time it feels genuinely fresh and new. It is a comeback that is so good it almost feels unreal. If I were to recommend one song from the new album, it would be Surrender.

When it comes to Leiah’s older songs, I highly recommend Week-End from the album Surrounded by Seasons.

The Revealing by Stretch Arm Strong

Stretch Arm Strong is an American melodic hardcore band, that released five full-length albums between 1998 and 2005. The last one, Free at Last, is a real masterpiece. Again, the band was almost completely silent for nearly two decades. And then in March this year - 2024, in case you’re reading this in the future - they released a new EP.

With six songs, The Revealing is only 14 minutes long. This might not seem like much, but the songs are really great. They are fast, aggressive, and full of positive energy. While many bands drift towards softer music as they age, this is certainly not the case here. The Revealing is pure energy, and I’ve been listening to it several times a day for the past two weeks. If I were to recommend just one song from the EP it would be Still Believe, Part III.

My only complaint about The Revealing is that, as of the moment of this writing, the CD version of the album is not available in Europe, leaving the option of purchasing either a digital version or a vinyl.

I also note that while Stretch Arm Strong has re-issued two of their old albums on vinyls, these albums cannot be purchased digitally on Bandcamp. Their digital versions are only available as a bonus if you purchase the vinyl release, which is a huge shame.

Still waiting for…

All the three releases above are great albums that brought me a lot of joy. While over the years I experimented with new bands and genres, I still come back to my favourite bands from two decades ago. Their music has a special place in my heart and I am truly happy to see some of them come back to life.

I hope this is not the end of it. At this point, my biggest hopes are for a new album from From Autumn To Ashes. In the past few years, the band has been actively touring and releasing their previous albums on vinyls. A new album feels like a next logical step. I keep my finger crossed.

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