Photo Credit: Ruben Navarro
If you were alive and listening to music in the early 2000’s there’s a 98.9% chance that you have heard Story Of The Year played on the radio or you might have owned one of those old fashioned compact discs. Their mega hit single “Until The Day I Die” from their debut album ‘Page Avenue’ was released in 2003, It’s one of those songs that you can hear the first 5 seconds and you know immediately what song it is no matter how long it’s been since you heard it last. That album also heralded another massive single with “Anthem of Our Dying Day”. That album was one of the first post-hardcore albums to be certified Gold by the RIAA. Between the bands formation and 2011 they released 4 studio albums, toured the world and gained fans by the thousands. The members went on a hiatus and performed with and formed side projects some of which included Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, The Fuck Off And Dies, and Greek Fire. The band spent a few years apart and in 2013 reunited for a ‘Page Avenue’ 10th anniversary tour. In September of 2014 the band announced they were working on a fifth album. The album would be titled ‘Wolves’ and after seven years since their last album, Story Of The Year the post-hardcore four-piece from the Show Me State returned with a new single, “Bang Bang,” from ‘Wolves’, that dropped on December 8th.
This week on Talk Toomey: The Metal Nexus Podcast host Joshua Toomey welcomes Story Of The Year guitarist Ryan Phillips. The singles had just started to drop and the band was really taking off, Ryan talks about the bands success and showing up to their headlining shows and seeing 100 kids in line for the show and wondered who was playing and didn’t immediately put it together that the long line of fans were there to see his band.’Page Avenue’ the bands first album was on the label Maverick which also had Madonna and Deftones signed to the label. Ryan talks about the possibility of meeting Madonna and was told if they got a gold record they could meet her. But ‘Page Avenue’ went gold and they still didn’t get the chance to meet her. About Deftones Ryan said “Being labels mates with Deftones that was to me like making it.” Story Of The Year broke out into the music scene right before revolutionary changes in the music industry like digital music and illegal downloading or piracy. He mentions on the 2nd album not being as successful as ‘Page Avenue’ and saying he could easily blame illegal downloading but the truth is their 2nd album wasn’t as easily accessible. He even goes way back saying My Chemical Romance once opened for them in cafeteria at a school, and there were very few people there just having lunch. He also says the bands touring plans have changed from the early years stating “Instead of getting in a van and touring around the U.S. for two months, we will hop on a plane and go to L.A. or New York”. So you we will likely see more one off dates for the band or short tours instead of a more grueling 30 day U.S. tour. You can hear the entire interview below as well as the new track “Praying For Rain” and see the video for “Bang Bang” above.
