5ever can trace their origins back to one exceptionally modern query: “Who do you know with face tattoos that can sing well?”
That fateful day in 2020, guitarist Tyler Dack wasn’t looking for a Soundcloud rapper (although that’d be equally epic), he was searching for bandmates to accompany him while putting together Boston’s next great emo band. And his former roommate, Alex Pickert, had the perfect response.
“Instantly I thought of my friend Sam [Nazaretian], who my old band Animal Flag had toured with in years past,” Pickert tells Vanyaland. “I told Tyler, ‘sorry, he doesn’t have face tattoos but he does have a great voice.’”
Over just a few texts, 5ever took form.
The new group emerged from hiding earlier this summer to gear up for the release of their frenetic debut EP Forever, which dropped last Friday (September 10). Recorded between January and May of this year, the band’s first six tracks bounce with pent-up pandemic energy, no doubt a reflection of their surprising timeline.
“Another wasted year, damn! / Laying on the couch / Thinking maybe I should have been better,” Nazaretian laments on album opener “Champagne.” Yet as the EP unpacks the throughly modern problems of the average 20-something — student loans, leaving home, and figuring out mortgages — Forever ends up proving that thesis statement wrong. Forever is a brazen display not just of emotional strength, but of physical strength, too. It leaps, it soars, and then it comes crashing down, all while triumphantly pumping its fists in the air. If this is where lounging on the sofa gets 5ever, then a “normal” year might just make their already-bursting pop-punk, well, pop.
Besides, 10,000 spins of a brand-new record from a brand-new band can’t be wrong.
“We know it seems like we are industry plants, and I mean… we wish we were…” Pickert chides. “But we knew we had to come right out of the gate with a killer release and music videos and the whole shabang, so it’s cool to see it already start to pay off a little, and we’re all so stoked on the response we have gotten so far.”
Feel the energy of Forever below.
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