NewYearsDayProject | a song a day blog

If you search "City of Auburn" on YouTube, you'll find several YouTube channels for city councils in various states. But today, we're not talking about any of those places, nor Auburn University, located in Auburn, Alabama. We're talking about a small Christian Rock band with about 32,000 monthly listeners on Spotify. The band comes from McKinney, Texas, and have released several EPs starting with 2014's Soul Searcher , which was a solo project of lead singer Michael James Osborn at the the time. For City of Auburn's second EP Spinning  in 2018, the band recorded with producer Matt Goldman . You may recall Goldman is especially known producing most of the Solid-State era Underoath records as well as producing a wide range of mostly Christian records from Casting Crowns to The Chariot .  I'M TAKING THE NEXT TRAIN. You may also recall that   Goldman is also responsible for recording Anberlin 's demos that garnered the interest from Brandon Ebel

When Red 's producer Rob Graves posted on Twitter a picture of a note on Red's guitars tuned to "A#, A, and G," some fans thought that the band's third album would be even heavier. In February of 2011, Red released Until We Have Faces , taking its name from the 1956 C.S. Lewis novel . The band delivered a more cohesive, harder rock sound than previous efforts with songs like  " Faceless ," the album's opener " Feed the Machine ," and " Lie to Me " (Denial). Today's song is a song about disappointment in someone's honesty. I recommend this song, not because I had someone hurt my feels because of a lie, but rather I'm hearing so many lies these days, it's hard to distinguish the truth. WILL YOUR HOPE DIE ALONE?    Okay, that's a little dramatic. Let me explain. I'm in the process of shopping for a new apartment, and it's very difficult to find an honest salesman. The whole thing has me more disheartened

On January 14th, Underoath released their ninth studio record, the self-produced Voyeurist . Today, Labeled launched a new video series called Deep Dives on YouTube. The series sets out to document the creative process of creating music. In this season Underoath will talk about the background to their latest album. In the first episode, the band talks about tensions in the band surrounding their polarizing eighth studio record, Erase Me , released in 2018.    The band talks about their recording process  with producer Matt Squire who almost therapeutically helped the band work through their creative differences on their last record, ultimately producing an album very different for the band. On Voyeurist,  though, the band decided to channel what they learned from Squire and previous producer Matt Goldman and craft another very different Underoath record. GOTTA CLEAN YOURSELF UP BEFORE YOU FADE AWAY. "I'm Pretty Sure" is Spencer Chamberlain at his best--singing and scream

Following up their 2013 album  Big TV , West-London-based post-punk band White Lies released their fourth album  Friends in 2016. The album continues on the band's homage to the '80s, though the synths are not always as prominent as their first and third albums. Lyrical themes deal with friendship deterioration, alienation, and loneliness, yet the ebullience of the music often disguises the sadness in the lyrics. NO, I'M NOT GOING TO BREAK YOUR HEART. White Lies started their career on a high note in the UK, but never really crossed over to the American market. The band formed in 2007 after ending an indie rock band called Fear of Flying the three member members of White Lies played in high school. In high school, the boys enjoyed listening to groups like Talking Heads and Franz Ferdinand , but with the inception of White Lies, the band claimed musical influence from Joy Division , Echo & the Bunnymen, and the Killers. The band decided to take a gap year between high

If you picked up Out of the Badlands , you may have been expecting Aaron Gillespie's third album to be in the vein of his prior solo releases. In 2016, Gillespie had long since left his drumming/singing duties in Underoath and had put his own Southern-influenced pop-punk band, The Almost, on hiatus. His next venture was signing to BEC, the Christian imprint of Tooth & Nail Records, and releasing an original Praise & Worship record followed by another one. But as much as he tried, the rough-n-tumble persona that Gillespie is--with his heavily tattooed body and penchant for an unguarded sailor-mouth--Praise & Worship music didn't pay the bills. What did pay the bills, Gillespie found, was drumming for 4 years of stadium tours with the band Paramore. On the podcast, Where Are All My Friends , Gillespie talks about this period with Paramore as an opportunity to lay his artistic endeavors aside, which ultimately inspired his next projects. These included a reunion with U

" Harbinger " was supposed to be the last song we ever heard from Anberlin . In 2013, the band agreed that they would release one last album and tour the world one last time. Stephen Christian  talked openly about that dark hour in the band and the recording industry at the time, and because he was the only one speaking, many fans wondered if there was bad blood. However, in 2017, which was certainly not "forever" after their "final show" in December of 2014, the band announced a reunion supporting their good friends Underoath , who had also gotten back together. Since that reunion show, the band has toured off-and-on again, and most recently, performed all seven of their studio albums on livestreams. Yesterday, the band performed the album they never intended to play live, Lowborn . But right after the band's final movement in their requiem, they premiered a new song called " Two Graves, " along with the announcement that a new record is in

East West was a Christian hard rock band that released two albums in the early 2000s. The most successful single from their debut album The Light in Guinevere's Garden was the guitar ballad " She Cries ," in which the band didn't scream the lyrics. East West's two releases are between two very important releases in Hard Christian Rock: P.O.D. 's Satellite  and Underoath 's They're Only Chasing Safety . The band's follow up,  Hope in Anguish  was produced much better than TLiGG. The grungy sounds of slow songs and the gut-punching screams of the heavy songs met the drums, effects petals, and truly depressing lyrics--dealing with addiction, child abuse, and the music business. Four of the songs--three of the non-screaming tracks--made there way to Christian Rock radio. East West was a band that showed that they could write a hit and have a heavy album.  I COULD NEVER REALLY FIND THE ANSWERS. Three years after the release of Hope in Anguish , East

Sandwiched between two metal bands, Anberlin played the show that kickstarted their career in Atlanta, Georgia. Brandon Ebel , Tooth & Nail Records ' founder, and owner loved the band's hits, but Chad Johnson , Tooth & Nail's A&R wasn't impressed with the live show. For starters, the band was playing pop-punk in between heavy, pre- They're Only Chasing Safety Underoath and chaos metal act Norma Jean headlining.  Anberlin sounded a bit more like Jimmy Eat World and Third Eye Blind. Nobody at the show knew Anberlin and were only there to most to the bands that they knew. What was worse was if the band was melodic, they had to have a singer who could hold a tune. Stephen Christian was off-pitch. Eventually, Ebel was able to convince Johnson to sign Anberlin. Their demo of " Ready Fuels " recorded by Matt Goldman , an Atlanta musician-turned producer, helped to solidify the decision. Ebel agreed to sign Anberlin as long as Stephen Christian t

In 2019, I rediscovered Wolves At the Gate band from the Labeled podcast. Labeled is a podcast about the history of Tooth & Nail and Solid State Records. As I get older, my tolerance for hard music is decreasing. Of course, when I was a teenager Post-Hardcore was king. Everyone used screaming in their music, but musical genres started to become more defined c. 2006 and there was hardcore and rock. And a lot of rock went more electronic and pop.  Still, even after the murky time, hardcore bands still liked to take a break from screaming and sing a ballad. When I picked up this record, though, I found less screaming and more of the type of music I liked before the rock/hardcore split. This group sounds more like New Medicines era Dead Poetic than Define the Great Line era Underoath. This album made me miss intense rock. Guitars and bass and drums and passionate singing spiced with some well-intentioned screaming.  YOU WON'T MAKE ME INTO YOUR PAWN. "Counterfeit" was th