Audio By Carbonatix
There are about a million current underground rock microscenes that, at one point, shared an evolutionary branch way back in punk rock. Trends in them are born, copied, and then summarily killed seemingly before anyone can even blog on Tumblr about them. Yet somehow, the national glossy Alternative Press remains on top of them all, both through its monthly magazine and online presence and through its branded package tours.
Interestingly, though these are often focused on what’s next, the current run of the AP tour features bands from recent years who have already established themselves as titans of their various factions. British act Gallows, for one, has long been hailed as the second coming of proper hardcore punk, one of the few acts that can be accurately labeled as such that’s still appeared on the Warped Tour in recent years. Four Year Strong, meanwhile, picked up the thread left by New Found Glory and has won hordes of fans with a buoyant, punk-inflected brand of power pop. Also particularly noteworthy on the bill are the Swellers, an act from famously depressed Flint, Michigan, that somehow combines melodic early hardcore with roughed-up ’90s indie for a resulting sound that is still critically underrated.
