When it comes to his long and fruitful career in music, Jim Ward is not guided by vanity or money or some grand narrative in which he’s the central player. It’s all about the song, the melody, the lyric. So in late-2017, when he began making heavier, more riff-laden music, he rang his Sparta bandmate of more than 20 years, bassist Matt Miller, and began work on Trust The River, the band’s first album since 2006’s Threes. Of their absence Ward notes, “I’ve made a real point to never break up a band, mostly because if you look at my history it’s filled with on-and-off-again projects. As much as I can control it, I don’t want there to be permanence.” Making the album was a multi-month songwriting process that culminated in some of the most inspired recording sessions of his career, with help from Miller and drummer Cully Symington, and guitarist Gabriel Gonzalez. Also joining them was Austin-based musician-producer, David Garza. Having been a member of heavy bands but also showcasing his more melancholic side via his solo work, Ward says the new Sparta album feels like the logical meeting point of his influences. “Naturally it’s coming to this unity,” he says. “Those two worlds have always been on a path towards unity. And I knew in my heart that it was coming.”

Josh Scogin kickstarted his small band with the big sound in 2013, naming the two-man outfit he modestly undersells as “a little rock, a little blues, a little hardcore” after his father’s old Camaro. And there’s a muscle car-sized rumble beneath the hood of what the Atlanta, Georgia native and his percussive partner-in-crime, Nikko Yamada, unleash with an array of guitar, bass, drums, keys, and pedals, careening between swinging barnburners, wild haymakers, and moody atmosphere. The passion, the hunger, the good humor, it all connects with diverse crowds. Deliciously stripped down and vibrant, ’68 excels in intimate environments, to be sure, but is no less unignorable on giant festival stages or on the road with Bring Me The Horizon, Stone Sour, Beartooth, Avatar, August Burns Red, The Amity Affliction, and Underoath, where they’ve earned new converts every day.

Geoffrey William Rickly (born March 8, 1979) is a singer and songwriter from Dumont, New Jersey. He is most known for forming the alternative rock/post-hardcore band Thursday in 1997, which got its start playing basement shows in New Brunswick and surrounding New Jersey and New York areas.