An Oral History of AbsolutePunk.net

AbsolutePunk.net

Over at the other AP:

Andrew McMahon emphasizes AbsolutePunk’s role in covering artists that other media outlets largely ignored. The former frontman of Something Corporate and Jack’s Mannequin, two acts that were popular amongst the community, explains “when the traditional music press was not very interested in covering my bands and other bands from our scene, AbsolutePunk was always there carrying the torch.”

Many thanks to Kelly, and to all the people that contributed to this article. Warms my little emo heart.

AbsolutePunk.net Throughout the Years

AbsolutePunk.net

As I’ve been spending some time bringing back some of the old AbsolutePunk reviews, interviews, and diving into my musical history via the “My Nostalgia” and “Back to…” series, I’ve been compiling pieces of the AP.net history together with things I’ve had in folders on my hard drive over the years. I’ve been able to piece together screenshots of various quality from quite a few of the years, and figured putting them online with commentary about what I remember from each “design” would be a fun way to preserve some of that history. Unfortunately so much of the early years is lost to time. I never even thought to keep archives.

Read More “AbsolutePunk.net Throughout the Years”

Butch Walker Week

Butch Walker

Once upon a time, I had a lot more time to write about music than I do now!

In 2013, about a year after I joined the staff at AbsolutePunk, I decided I’d take on a project called “Butch Walker Week.” The basic idea was that I’d go back and write about every Butch album, from the records with his former band Marvelous 3 up to his solo output, in the week leading up to his then-new EP Peachtree Battle. That project ended up running 11 reviews and about 16,000 words of text.

When Jason started reviving old AbsolutePunk content to post here on Chorus, I knew I wanted to resurrect this feature. Butch Walker has been one of the absolute constants in my musical evolution for the past 15 years. Getting to write about all his records back then was super fulfilling (and even earned some Twitter recognition from the man himself). Reading back through these reviews reminded me how much these albums meant to me (and how much they continue to mean to me now). So whether you’re familiar with Butch’s work or just thinking about listening to him for the first time, I hope you’ll give these old write-ups a look!

Read More “Butch Walker Week”

Mending Broken History

AbsolutePunk.net

In April of 2016, we said goodbye to AbsolutePunk and launched Chorus. Saying goodbye to something that was such a massive part of my life was difficult, but also absolutely necessary. The following years have allowed me a freedom and release from the mental weight of that website that I find hard to put into words. The only minor regret I have, from time to time, is that so much of the history of the music scene was lost. But whereas I am very glad many threads, comment sections, and horrific posts are forever scrubbed from the internet, there is a part of me that misses the content and historical record of big events, certain album releases, and old interviews with bands that have been forgotten to time.

In order to keep some of the scene’s musical history alive, we’ve republished some of the old AbsolutePunk content here on Chorus and will continue to bring over various articles we think are historically relevant. We’ve also added a new visual banner on this content to better signify that it was once on AbsolutePunk and to link to this post, explaining as such.

Read More “Mending Broken History”

Drew Beringer’s AbsolutePunk.net Reviews

AbsolutePunk.net

Hey remember AbsolutePunk.net? Once upon a time I used to write a lot of reviews. Hard to believe, I know. Jokes aside, Twitter and Jason’s “Re-Ranking The Decades” series dialed up the nostalgic side of me. I wanted to see if I still had some of the reviews I’d written over the past decade or so. Turns out, my iCloud Drive has a lot. Now I won’t be re-publishing every thing I’ve ever written (some of these documents deserve to stay buried in the depths of my hard drive), but I wanted to share the reviews that brought about a ton of lively discussion and debate on the records that defined that site and a lot of our musical interests. Cool? Cool. Now to see if I can bring back scene points….

Read More “Drew Beringer’s AbsolutePunk.net Reviews”

All Punked Up Podcast Talking AbsolutePunk.net

I was a recent guest on the All Punked Up Podcast:

Join us as Jason Tate takes us on the entire journey of what it was like to run the now defunct AbsolutePunk.net website in the early 2000s, how the site played a huge part in launching the careers of some of the bands we still love today, what he learned along the way and how he took that knowledge to re-brand what was our old favorite news site as a new and improved version that is now Chorus.fm.

This was a fun trip down memory lane and a nice opportunity to stretch out some of those podcast muscles. (Overcast link.)

Read More “All Punked Up Podcast Talking AbsolutePunk.net”

Blast from the Past: My End of Year Lists from 2005-2015

AbsolutePunk.net Heart

Yesterday, I posted about finding and recreating all of the AbsolutePunk.net best of lists from 2005-2015. In an incredible turn of events, a reader actually had saved all of my personal best of lists and sent them to me. I didn’t have anything earlier than 2011 and I thought these were lost to time.1 I am extremely happy to be able to add them back into the Chorus.fm database for posterity.

These are a nostalgia trip. I’ll have to write more about my decision making process, from what I can remember of these eras, at some point, but for now I’m just happy to have them back on our “End of the Year” page.


  1. The era before I was doing any kind of regular back-ups, let alone keeping everything I write in text files on my computer.

Blast From the Past: Old AbsolutePunk.net Best of Lists

AbsolutePunk.net

When I re-designed the new website and put together the new “End of the Year” feature page, I added a bunch of old lists from the AbsolutePunk days as well. They’re a lot of fun to read back through and remember the albums, remember the arguments, and see which ones have held up and which ones are hilariously all over the place.

UPDATE • May 28, 2020

Big news: I’ve been able to recreate all of the lists, in the correct order. With a special shoutout to sosplatano in the forums for helping me figure out the holes in 2012.

UPDATE #2 • May 28, 2020

In an incredible turn of events, a reader had saved all of my personal best of lists and has sent them to me. Those have now also been added back into the database.

Last Call for AbsolutePunk Pin Pre-Orders

AP.net Logo Pin (Gold)

This is the last week we’re going to have pre-orders up for the AbsolutePunk.net commemorative logo pin through Hard Rock’s Online Rock Shop. So, if you want one of these little guys, now is the time to make sure you get your order in. This entire thing has been a lot of fun and introduced me into the world of pin collecting. I didn’t even know this was a thing until we put this together. Now I’m seeing them everywhere, and if my favorite bands start putting these out my wallet may be in trouble. I mean, I already saw the limited edition Portland Timbers one and kinda want it. If Blink put out one of their logo? Or a little floating Brand New spaceman? Yeah, I’d have no idea where I’d even store them and I’d want all the pins. But I digress.

Last call for pre-orders on Hard Rock’s Online Rock Shop.

Second Edition Commemorative AbsolutePunk Logo Pin

AP.net Logo Pin (Gold)

Last week we teamed up with Hard Rock’s Online Rock Shop to debut a special commemorative pin for the AP.net logo. We sold out of that limited run in just a few hours. After talking with our friends at Hard Rock, we’ve decided to do a second edition run of the pin. This version is bordered in a really cool antique gold color and is now available for pre-order. These won’t ship as fast as the last version as they haven’t gone into production yet, but we are aiming to have them sent out by the end of the month. I’ve been seeing a bunch of you post pictures of your pins on Instagram and Twitter and I can’t explain how cool it is to see that logo out “in the wild” like that. They really do look fantastic. I hope everyone that wasn’t able to grab the first run can get in on this pre-order, and I look forward to seeing even more photos in the near future.

If you missed last week’s post, I included a little history about how that logo even came to be. Now we just have to come up with something for Chorus so that in 20 years we can do another pin.

Read More “Second Edition Commemorative AbsolutePunk Logo Pin”