With humble beginnings in 2001/2002 (they didn't play to a serious degree until a few years later), the Morristown, New Jersey outfit blended punk rock, psychedelia, post-hardcore and all of that with an experimental flair. The band members originally consisted of Jerry Jones (lead vocalist), John Ferrara (guitarist & pianist), Joshua Weinstein (bassist) and Brian Ferrara (drummer), with some personnel changes throughout the band's career.
Their first album, Darts to the Sea, was released in 2003 when their reputation through live-shows ballooned in reception. Darts... at first was released as an EP, but got a reissue that came with additional material, making it into an LP later on. It was received warmly, which is a fair start for any new band in the post-hardcore/punk rock scene.
Next was Hospital Music for the Aesthetics of Language in 2004, and the tones & influences found on this album grew immensely. Incorporating everything from jazz instrumentation to hip-hop rhythms, math-y song structures & emo vocal stylings, and everywhere in-between. Goodnight Alchemy upped the heavy factor, and was the first album to be distributed by a label. Alphabet. Alphabets. incorporated an even wider-range of influences than before, with a noted retention of the Main/Post-Hardcore style. The band also opened up their touring schedule more with this release.
Bad Luck saw a marked adjustment to their sound yet again, with Main/Blues Music being the major template. This change would take for the rest of the band's career. The band faced numerous hardships before, during, and after its release, with the band's future in question due to financial ruin. Fans of the band helped to donate funds with the Bad Luck Foundation, which succeeded in its intention. With that help, along with a pan-Canadian tour with Music/Fear Before & Music/Baptized in Blood, Trophy Scars brought an even darker, blues & psychedelic album in Darkness, Oh Hell. Conversely, their follow-up to this album, Never Born, Never Dead was a more uplifting experience, and was softer & lighter overall than several of their previous works.
Holy Vacants was released to acclaim in 2014, featuring a more consistent, robust implementation of the blues & psychedelia heard in their previous few albums. It is a concept album like most of their releases.
Seven long years later, the band dropped Astral Pariah to comparable acclaim, and follows a concept just like before. Tinged with Western influences, it is a non-linear exploration of a character, referred to as the namesake Astral Pariah, violently seeking retribution against the members of his family. All of them die.
Common themes to their music includes introspection, philosophy, sardonic & dark humor, sarcasm, existentialism & surrealism.
Discography:
- Darts to the Sea (2003; re-released with more material in 2006, alongside the EP Sand in the Sea)
- Hospital Music for the Aesthetics of Language (2004)
- Goodnight Alchemy (2006)
- Alphabet. Alphabets. (2006)
- Bad Luck (2009)
- Darkness, Oh Hell (2010)
- Never Born, Never Dead (2011)
- Holy Vacants (2014)
- Astral Pariah (2021)
Current Members:
- Jerry Jones; Vocals
- John Ferrara; Guitar & Vocals
- Brian Ferrara; Drums, Percussion & Vocals
- Andy Farrell; Bass & Vocals
- Gray Reinhard; Piano
Trophy Scars provides examples of the following tropes:
- Alliterative Title: Alphabet. Alphabets is chock-full of them. It's even lamp-shaded in the closing track's title!
- Concept Album: Holy Vacants counts as one, with Astral Pariah serving as a follow-up. Generally though, most of their releases follow a loose concept at least.
- Darker and Edgier: Bad Luck took their sound in an overall darker direction, being influenced by the death of Jerry Jones' best friend, Ben Brown.
- Astral Pariah to Holy Vacants
- Downer Ending: "Cosmic Suicide", the closer to Astral Pariah, should come as no surprise.
- First-Person Peripheral Narrator: Each song, named after the family members that the protagonist kills, is written from their perspectives.
- Genre Mashup: Started as something of a post-hardcore outfit when they played more out of passion than seriousness. With each new release a new sound can be heard, including blues, psychedelia, hip-hop beats (and even segments featuring hip-hop vocals), emo, progressive rock, post-punk, and many others. Since Bad Blood, however, blues rock has taken up a lot of prominence in their sound.
- Instrumentals: They have several.
- Matricide: The protagonist of Astral Pariah kills his mother in the second track, appropriately named "Mother."
- New Sound Album: Almost every successive release sees the band trying new or at least denser sounds. Bad Blood was a big change, in particular.
- Patricide: In Astral Pariah, our protagonist deals with & ends up offing his father. The songs "Father: Part 1" & "Father: Part 2" deal with this conflict. In fact, the death of the father wraps up the protagonist's story arc.
- One-Word Title: This is what Alphabet. Alphabets. is all about, zig-zagging a little. Just look at the track list.
- "Yes" is the seventh track.
- "No" is the eigth.
- Sibling Murder: Two of the songs in Astral Pariah are explicitly about the protagonist offing their sister then brother: "Sister", which is track four, and "Brother" which is track seven.
- Title Track: "Never Born" & "Never Dead", respectively – separate tracks that make up the title of Never Born, Never Dead. "Astral Pariah" off of Astral Pariah also counts.
- Uncommon Time: Alphabet. Alphabets. has a mathcore thing going on.
