Brendan Manley

Various Artists Love Is Hopeless Before you roll your eyes at the very idea of a Valentine’s Day comp, which admittedly, could easily devolve into a mass of pathetic, woe-is-me emoting and merciless ex-bashing chock full of lead-pipe metaphors, trust in Hopeless Records’ substantial pedigree for promoting quality jams and give this one a shot. […]

Various Artists ‘Tis The Season To Be Fearless The only thing worse than a superfluous Christmas compilation is a superfluous Christmas comp with mostly originaltracks, so it’s an early holiday treat to find that ‘Tis The Season To Be Fearlessavoids both of these Yuletide pitfalls. The label’s new foray into the jolly old genre surprisingly […]

The Almost Monster Monster EP In the second pre-chorus of “Birmingham,” the lead track on the Almost’s Monster Monster EP, frontman Aaron Gillespie pleads, “I wanna be just what I need to be/I'm getting free just like I gotta be,” over punchy guitars and a militant rhythm once-removed from Green Day’s “Holiday.” Then a big […]

Despite his understandable thrill at having the chance to join UNDEROATH (featured in AP 269) as the band’s new drummer, DANIEL DAVISON (second from left) has been far from dormant since leaving Norma Jean in 2007. Between playing and working various roles in the music buisness, Davison has had a lot of irons in the fire in […]

A Day To Remember What Separates Me From You Maybe A Day To Remember's latest, What Separates Me From You, will be the album when all the haters finally quit hating. For now, though, it's really good that they haven't: ADTR work best angry. There's a spot about midway through “Sticks & Bricks,” the pummeling […]

Ludo Prepare The Preparations Perhaps if St. Louis geek rockers Ludo hadn’t hit such a homerun with 2008’s You’re Awful, I Love You, the follow-up to that record, Prepare The Preparations, wouldn’t be such a letdown. But alas, anyone expecting to hear another “Love Me Dead” or “Drunken Lament” on Preparations will be sorely disappointed. […]

Take This To Your Grave One spin of Take This To Your Grave and a quick peek at the band’s endearing DIY video for the impossibly catchy “Dead On Arrival” was all it took back in 2003 to realize that the embryonic Chicago pop-punk four-piece Fall Out Boy were on their way to becoming a global phenomenon. […]

Fall Out Boy’s Evening Out With Your Girlfriend If you weren’t already convinced that Fall Out Boy frontman Patrick Stump could belt out the ingredients on the back of a bag of Doritos and somehow make them into the catchiest little ditty ever, consider the fact that Stump, while still just a kid himself, almost even managed […]

Craig Owens With Love With Love is the first true “solo” record released by Craig Owens, the former Chiodos mic-wielder and international man of many side projects, and it kind of leaves you scratching your head. Released in September 2009 just weeks before the band announced they'd given Owens the boot, you almost have to […]