Attack Attack! Lightening In A Bottle

 If you ask anyone who listens to screamo, we will use that umbrella term for today, and went to high-school in the 2000's they would almost all know who Attack Attack! is. The band had a lot of disfunction and a lot of success with only releasing 3 albums and what seemed to be a revolving door with lineup and member changes. Oh, and not to mention these guys were still teenagers when they started the band and got signed. 

The group from Ohio exploded on to the music scene in 2008 with their debut album Someday Came Suddenly. The album came out on Rise Records and was recorded with Joey Sturgis and was part of a run of albums that Rise produced that were incredible. When I first heard AA! and this album, it was on repeat non-stop. The album intro of Hot Grills and High Tops was unheard of during this time. It started off the album with a hip hop intro that lead straight into a breakdown from Stick Stickly, which is probably their biggest song they've come out with. As the album goes on AA! blended autotune, which was very big within music as a whole at the time, and catchy synth and programming with brutal breakdowns. It was something that had not been done before and was ushering in a new era, and genre called crabcore, of music. 

With the success of their debut album the band quickly hopped on big tours supporting big name bands as well as playing all summer long on Warped Tour. The success did not come without some bumps in the road. The band kicked out their original vocalist Austin Carlile, who went on to have an amazing career with his band Of Mice & Men before having to call it quits due to health complications with Marfan Syndrome, only to have his replacement quit the band not long after joining. With the revolving door of frontmen the band decided to have Caleb Shomo take over the vocals as well continue doing synth and keys. The Shomo on the mic they released their second self titled album Attack Attack!. With this album came a darker sound and feel. Which was a complete change up from the album before. Gone was the auto-tuned clean vocals and in came the deep screams and growls of Shomo. The album still had synth parts and keys which still gave it that AA! feel but was very different from what we had heard before. It was almost like when Underoath came out with They're Only Chasing Safety and Define The Great Line. Two very different and very good albums but on a much, much lesser scale. With this album they continued to grow and get more and more popular with playing bigger tours and bigger stages at Warped Tour. 

Not long after their self titled album released, Johnny Frank who did the clean vocals on the albums left the band to focus on his relationship with God. With the exit of Frank the band came out and said that Shomo will be taking over all the vocals for the band, cleans included. In 2012 their third album This Means War debuted at number 9 on the charts but was the beginning of the end for the band as we knew it. Shomo left the band due to mental health issues and depression. Shomo would go on to have another successful career with his band Beartooth, who is very, very good. The band tried to continue on with different frontmen but ultimately called it quits not long after Shomo left. 

Attack Attack! was pretty revolutionary and had a very big impact on the music scene but at the time it did not seem like that. After their success many bands started to imitate what they were doing: I See Stars, Abandon All Ships, early Crown The Empire and Woe, Is Me as well as We Came As Romans to name a few. With all of that success at such a young age for the members of the band one has to think that contributed to their downfall as well. Whenever one of their songs comes on I can't help but think what could have been for the band if they would have had more stability and consistency within the bands lineup. I saw them play all three years they did Warped Tour and it was never the same line up twice. The members have gone on to go do great things in other music avenues and bands. The guitarist and drummer, Andrew Wetzel and Andrew Whiting, released a new song under the Attack Attack! name saying the band was back but, in my opinion, it's just a way for them to get out there and plays to the over 1.4 million people who follow them on Facebook. Its a good song but not Attack Attack! like we were use to. But at the same time, we never got use to them because each album was a different band. So it's kind of fitting to have a different lineup for the "reunion". With the success of the bands that formed in the wake of Attack Attack!, it is hard to not think what could have come from this band from Ohio. 

How'd You Get Into This Music?!

I get asked a lot of questions when it comes to the music I like and listen to. Probably the question I get asked the most is, "Just how did you get into this?". It is a simple question with a not so simple answer. I do not fit the mold of what someone would think a person who listens to metal or screamo would look like. I am probably the furthest person from a typical metal head. I grew up listening to country music and was raised on Garth Brooks being played loudly while we cleaned the house growing up. My first concert ever was Toby Keith and Blake Shelton when I was in the 5th grade. Little did I know that concert would be the first of countless concerts and shows for me and would ignite something in me to want to go to as many as possible.

Around that time I remember hearing All The Small Things by Blink-182 and really really liking it. I was also getting in to the drums around this time as well which looking back, really influenced my musical tastes as well. I began listening to bands like Blink-182, Relient K, Yellowcard, Fall Out Boy and so many other of those pop-punk bands while in junior high. My sister would get mad at me for air-drumming along with them while sitting shotgun in her car. Those bands really got me exploring more into the "underground" scene of music that was not played on the radio or mainstream.

As I got older and into high school I was introduced into Underoath and my life was never the same again. It was like the scales were taken off my eyes and they were opened to a whole world of music I did not know existed. At first I did not like the screaming. I was not a fan of it at all. Then it slowly began to grow on me and then I loved it. My buddies and I in high school all liked the same type of music and there was so much good music out there. We would go out to shows and jam out in our cars and blare the music incredibly loud with the windows down. The first show I ever went to was Oh, Sleeper and it was like something I have never experienced before. When I walked in it felt like I was walking into a place where everyone belonged. It was absolute chaos but at the same time very peaceful for those that were there. I did not know that I would end up seeing that same band 15+ times over the next 12 years and countless concerts during that span.

So there it is, the slow process of getting into "Angry Music". It has now become apart of me and what I am known for amongst my friends. And no, its not just a phase.

Songs that influenced me:
- All The Small Things
- Vices Like Vipers
- Writing On The Walls
- Reinventing Your Exit
- Lights And Sounds
- Stiletto 
- The Pretender