With a new album, Listen Up!, about to drop later this month- Feb. 20– via Nashville’s Pure Noise Records, beloved pop punks New Found Glory are set to celebrate with a just-announced release show at intimate local venue The End that evening (as well as a sold out acoustic performance that afternoon at Grimey’s). No strangers to Nashville (guitarist Chad Gilbert has long been an area resident, and singer Jordan Pundik previously called Music City home as well, leading the band to often write, record, and rehearse here, as well perform in town basically every single year), NFG have played venues of all sizes all over the city, but it’s been a long time since they’ve performed anywhere as small or rowdy as The End.
The End is one of our favorite venues in the whole city, and a perfect place to see a punk show, and given some recent financial struggles (like most all small indie venues right now), it’s great to see a big artist like this bringing such a special spot some extra attention. With a capacity of only a couple hundred, tickets are guaranteed to go quick, and they’re set to go on sale today (Tuesday), Feb. 10 at noon CST right here!
Formed in 1997 in Coral Springs, Florida, New Found Glory are, undoubtedly, one of the most important and influential bands in modern pop punk, and one whose tour schedule and musical output has remained steady for their entire near-30-year run. Fusing their love of hardcore with a penchant for unabashedly poppy punk hooks, the band grew to prominence within the scene around the turn of the millennium, finding breakout critical and commercial acclaim with 2002 third album Sticks and Stones, which arrived at time that pop punk was fast becoming the dominant force in rock, a movement which NFG, no doubt, helped usher in, as important to the era as peers like Jimmy Eat World, Fall Out Boy, and Taking Back Sunday, and as visible at the time as mega acts like Green Day and Blink-182, while still maintaining ties and appeal to the DIY and more underground side of the scene, as well as keeping a connection to their love of hardcore (notably, the band even spent a few years in the late ’00s making hardcore as International Superheroes of Hardcore).
2004’s Catalyst was a similarly huge, crossover effort, and helped cement what’s more or less been the template for many great albums to follow. As pop punk shrunk from the mainstream, some of the group’s less tenable peers faded away, but New Found Glory doubled down on crafting fan-focused, true to their roots music, maintaining a cult following with a steady stream of solid records, consistent touring, and sincere approachability. Their latest original effort, tenth LP Forever + Ever x Infinity, arrived in 2020, amidst the Covid lockdown, and the time since has marked their longest stretch without a new, original full-length. That’s not to say they’ve slowed down- from a Christmas album to an acoustic mix of new and old, tons of touring, a third installment of their breakfast-themed local punk fest BreakFest, and more- the band have stayed busy, while also navigating some personal hardships, particularly guitarist Chad Gilbert’s battle with an aggressive metastatic cancer.
Finally back with an 11th original LP, Listen Up! marks both a nod to the past- the band all got together in Nashville and wrote together with a riff forward approach like their early work- as well as an attempt to push themselves creatively and personally, crafting what became a record about hope and resilience in the face of struggle. Poppy and frenetic with a bit of hardcore DNA, the album, or at least the handful of singles out so far, sounds like classic NFG, but also a reflection of a band who’ve been through a lot, and still endured, together, and with optimism and courage. A band who’ve long understood exactly who they are and what fans love about them so much, New Found Glory are as exhilarating and nostalgic live as they’ve ever been, and if you don’t manage to get a ticket to see them at The End, you’ll have another chance this summer, when they open for Yellowcard June 8 at Ascend Amphitheater!
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