Silverstein enters its 25th year with two full-length albums set for 2025. The band that NME calls “legendary,” and Loudwire placed among the Most Prolific Rock & Metal Artists of the 21st Century, continues to innovate and inspire on forward-thinking records and at crowd-embracing live shows. 

Discovering the Waterfront (2005) remains a touchstone classic. A Beautiful Place to Drown (2020) earned a Rock Album of the Year nomination at the Juno Awards. Antibloom (arriving in February) and Pink Moon (August) are stunning reminders of why the group is a vital subcultural force and why Alternative Press readers voted frontman Shane Told among the Five Best Post-Hardcore Vocalists. 

Silverstein songs like “My Heroine,” “Smile in Your Sleep,” “The Afterglow,” and “Infinite” are postmodern anthems for a devoted following earned with passionate performances and authentic artistry. As recently as 2024, The Needle Drop called them “emo hardcore legends.” While their 500M+ streams reflect that, Silverstein grew up in a scene where the music and message come first. 

Audiences sing and scream along in packed theaters, at festivals, and on tours around the world with groups like Simple Plan, Rise Against, Good Charlotte, Pierce The Veil, Beartooth, and Underoath. 

Sam Guaiana (Neck Deep, Holding Absence, Bayside) produced and mixed Antibloom and Pink Moon at Fireside Sound in Joshua Tree, California. The band arrived with 25 demos and chose their 16 favorites. Koehler suggested splitting the music into two albums and turning 2025 into a year-long celebration. This will allow listeners the space to absorb and connect with the songs, which embrace the band’s storied past and postmodern leanings in equal measure, making for diverse experiences. 

“We put everything we’ve learned/felt/experienced into this double album,” the band said in a shared statement, declaring Antibloom and Pink Moon “the absolute collection of our musical style.”

Post-hardcore legends Thursday just debuted their first new song since 2011, “Application For Release From The Dream” at an intimate show in Albany, NY moments before the song was released on all DSPs (coincidentally coinciding with the 13th anniversary of their last album No Devolución). In the years since their last release the band’s enduring influence has grown exponentially, with their fearless approach to creative evolution and their unwavering principled stance in the face of music business adversity providing a roadmap to the generation of bands that have followed in their wake. The new single marks the band’s first proper self-release, furthering the DIY stature they have maintained since reforming in 2016 and demonstrating their stoic independence and evolution into a self-sustaining cottage industry (all the while providing free tickets to unemployed and disadvantaged fans). Nowhere is this as evident as their live shows, where their consistently growing fan base shows up time and time again - as evidenced by the huge turnout for their recent tour celebrating the 21st anniversary of their Billboard Top Ten album War All The Time, despite being their fifth American tour in two years.

Formed in New Brunswick, NJ in 1998 and with worldwide album sales in the millions, Thursday released six critically acclaimed albums from 1999-2011, including the pivotal and massively influential albums Full Collapse and War All The Time in 2001 and 2003 respectively. Renowned for having their finger on the pulse of the most creative strains of the culture, Thursday has a long history of touring with groundbreaking acts in tow, including early pivotal tours with Gaslight Anthem, Portugal the Man, Touche Amore, Murder By Death, and My Chemical Romance (whose debut album was produced by Thursday frontperson Geoff Rickly). Notwithstanding, the band’s sonic diversity has given them the opportunity to share stages in the past, present, and (hopefully) future with luminaries stretching from Hatebreed to The Cure, illustrating how far their music stretches beyond the visible spectrum of categorisation.

The band just wrapped a short run of small club shows with Many Eyes and Tim Kasher with several more shows and tours planned throughout the year, including a run of European dates, When We Were Young Festival this Fall, Hawthorne Heights’ traveling Is For Lovers festival, and more to be announced. While “Application For Release From the Dream” is a standalone release, the band are also continuing to work on more new music with plans to roll out songs as they record them, unmoored from the traditional approach of releasing albums.

Two years before  emo/indie rock outfit Free Throw formed in Nashville, the Memphis Grizzlies made national headlines for their “grit and grind.” Some not familiar with basketball may assume this was another phrase describing the team’s tireless work ethic. Journalists and analysts claimed this “grit and grind” was their disruptive defense. A ‘free throw’ is usually given to a player disrupted by defense — so while unintentionally borrowing the ethos of their home state’s NBA franchise, Free Throw went on the offensive.

Consider the band’s signature play: a three-guitar attack which stacks raw immediacy with large-scale aspirations. Sometimes this arrangement is abrasive; other times it’s more nuanced. What connects these two different threads is Cory Castro’s frayed vocals, gaining their power from a violent shout and their confessions from a measured whimper.

Combine that range with a set of lyrical themes that play out like an uneasy three-way phone call and what remains fills speakers with a darkness offset by instrumentals which sway and bend with warm nostalgia.

But what fills most of Free Throw’s golden playbook is a commitment to winning their own way. After strings of DIY touring circuits and an intense love affair with their van, it’s clear to see their blooming, road-tested legacy answers to no one but their enthusiastic audiences. With their live sets packing rooms across the country, not without alcohol and crowd sing-alongs in tow, it seems this grind has paid off so far, with the grit packing their songs with not just unrelenting talent, but the forward-thinking energy to match.

Leading force in Australian Melodic Hardcore, Bloom combines fierce sounds and impassioned lyrics to steadily build a concrete foundation through their passionate, conceptual projects to date. With a catalogue that focuses on grief, internalised struggles and exile, Bloom partners their deeply emotive lyrical content with surging rhythms and memorable hooks to dynamically marry harrowing concepts and captivating listening experiences.  

After the release of their second EP 'In Passing' and signing to Greyscale Records, Bloom completed a 19 date Australian tour amidst of the hardships of 2021, and worked hard at improving and rejuvenating their live show, whilst writing and recording their next release entirely remotely with producer Christopher Vernon.  

‘Sink Into the Soil’ saw them take on their first headline tour around Australia, along with national tours supporting Void of Vision, Holding Absence, Ocean Grove and Bad Omens alongside numerous sold-out headline shows and festival appearances at UNIFY Gathering and CVLTFEST along the way.  

Having just completed another national headline tour with the support of Better Half, Bloom are looking stronger than ever and are gearing up to finish 2023 strong. With a national tour supporting Thornhill, Holding Absence & Thousand Below, as well as the release of their best work yet in partnership with Pure Noise Records before closing out the year with appearances at Good Things Festival, the future is bright for this exciting new voice in Australian alternative music.