Brendan Manley

Yellowcard Lift A Sail There’s been seemingly constant heartache and upheaval in the Yellowcard camp since 2012’s Southern Air, from violinist Sean Mackin’s battle with thyroid cancer to the departure of drummer and founding member Longineu “LP” Parsons, to the tragic 2013 snowboarding accident that left vocalist/guitarist Ryan Key’s wife Alyona Alekhina paralyzed from the waist down. It’s fitting

Four Year Strong Go Down In History EP Four Year Strong fans will breathe a collective sigh of relief when they get their mitts on Go Down In History, the latest from the Worcester, Massachusetts, popcore beard-punks since  2011's lukewarm arena-rock experiment, In Some Way, Shape Or Form. Seconds into ...

Aaron West And The Roaring Twenties We Don't Have Each Other Like a great novel, it’s hard to imagine that the fictitious characters who populate We Don’t Have Each Other—the debut full-length by Dan “Soupy” Campbell’s solo project Aaron West And The Roaring Twenties—don’t actually exist in the real world, and aren’t carrying on where the story leaves off, somewhere out there. Campbell, who normal

The Word Alive REAL. It takes serious swagger to be a modern metalcore/post-hardcore band who drop a record called REAL.—a musical shot across the collective bow of fellow contenders and also-rans alike—and Phoenix quintet the Word Alive back up the insinuation with a shock-and-awe barrage of blast beats, blazing guitars and perhaps most crucially, a formidable array of razor-sharp hooks. Sure, th

Me First And The Gimme Gimmes Are We Not Men? We Are Diva! The latest by punk-cover supergroup Me First And The Gimme Gimmes gives decades’ worth of hits by the ladies (and, um, Boy George) the full Me First treatment, and for once, singing along to said tunes isn’t a source of shame and mockery. As usual, ...

Fireworks Oh, Common Life It’s been beyond impressive to watch Fireworks evolve over the last eight years from an earnest Midwestern pop-punk outfit inspired by New Found Glory and the Movielife to the band who created their latest, Oh, Common Life, an album that brilliantly straddles the group’s roots while pushing ahead into bold new territory. Even coming off ...

Title Fight Spring Songs EP Don’t let the name fool you: Spring Songs is definitely not a collection of cheery toe-tappers from the usually gloomy Kingston, Pennsylvania, four-piece. Nope, the plodding four-track EP carries on right where 2012’s Floral Green left off, exploring more of the sludgy, ruminating neo-grunge and Jawbreaker-esque ’90s punk that’s become the band’s hallmark. Like on Flora

The Swellers The Light Under Closed Doors The Swellers thrive on poetic desperation; a kind of underlying sadness and inner tension, deceptively presented within a seemingly sweet pop-punk melody. It’s what fueled the Michigan quartet’s “Rust Belt lullabies” on 2009’s dazzling Ups And Downsizing, and it also drives the band’s latest, The Light Under Closed Doors, their first full-length since an i

Sainthood Reps Headswell On the surface, you can’t help but notice the obvious influence fellow Long Islanders Brand New have had on Sainthood Reps; after all, SR feature BN touring member Derrick Sherman on guitar, and both bands regularly collaborate with LI producer/creative guru Mike Sapone. That ...

A Day To Remember Common Courtesy A Day To Remember are no dummies. It’s been a long, litigious three years for the band since releasing 2010’s What Separates Me From You, and after finally re-emerging victoriously from their high-profile lawsuit with Victory Records just this month, now is certainly not the time to drop a dance-pop record or space-rock opera on arenas full of pent-up ADTR fans jo

Saves The Day Saves The Day Having finally completed Saves The Day’s dark, deeply ambitious and equally voluminous autobiographical concept-album trilogy with 2011’s Daybreak, frontman Chris Conley was suddenly free to write anything, for the first time in roughly six years. And he’s m ...

Transplants In A Warzone Previous Transplants albums basically felt like a vehicle for Tim Armstrong and Travis Barker to step outside the punk confines of their full-time gigs (Rancid and Blink-182, respectively), dabbling with bits of funk, hip-hop and electronica ...

August Burns Red Rescue & Restore Now a decade into their career, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, quintet August Burns Red have stated they are on a mission to revive metalcore from its self-induced coma of conformity, and their latest, Rescue & Restore (the title being a nod to said crusade), puts the band’s music where their collective mouth is. An immed ...

The Story So Far/Stick To Your Guns Split EP You get quite the sonic Captain’s Sampler platter within the space of just four tracks on the new split EP from the Story So Far and Stick To Your Guns, with each band contributing a new song and a cover to the EP. And ...

Daylight Jar Considering that up until recent history, Doylestown, Pennsylvania’s musical claim to fame was pop bad-girl Pink and Afro-sporting Stevie Wonder knockoff Justin Guarini (that guy who almost beat Kelly Clarkson on American Idol), it’s pretty incredible that these days sonic innovators Circa Survive and Balance And Composure both call D-Town home. And now, w ...

Vinnie Caruana City By The Sea EP Vinnie Caruana has played a lot of acoustic shows over the past decade, and every one of those performances can be heard in City By The Sea, his masterful new six-song acoustic EP. Packed with more of Caruana’s ever-cutting lyrical prowess and a gritty, muscular vocal performance that never wavers, the collection is arguably his strongest release since I Am The Av

The Spill Canvas Gestalt Score another for Kickstarter. In the same year that we have a fine new Matt Pryor record to enjoy thanks to the revolutionary capital-raising web sensation, now there’s also a long-awaited new release from the Spill Canvas, after the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, quartet, formerly on Reprise Recods, raised $35,000 through the site in less than 60 days. Ever ...

This Providence Brier EP Seattle rockers This Providence are making a go of it on their own since parting ways with Fueled By Ramen earlier this year. They recently formed the DIY imprint Magic Mike Records to issue Brier, a new four-song EP to tide listeners over until a proper full-length is complete ...

Open Hand The Mark Of The Demon EP The latest by California prog-rockers Open Hand is a one-track, 10-minute sweep through the band’s inimitable career, combining a mesmerizing assortment of outtakes, demos, live snippets and random ideas into one uninterrupted stream of musical consciousness. If O ...

Jamie's Elsewhere Reimagined EP Over the last seven years, post-hardcore hopefuls Jamie’s Elsewhere have been through a seemingly never-ending array of lineup changes, with founding guitarist Matt Scarpelli the only constant. In 2008, however, they found their franchise player in vocalist Aaron Pauley. The ...