There are moments in our lives where we make a conscious effort to change the way we do things. Maybe it’s a change of careers, a lifestyle change of some sort, or an unforeseen change that’s completely out of our hands. New Found Glory are aware of all of these factors going into their latest album, Make The Most Of It, and they do their best to make the best out of a horrible situation. Guitarist Chad Gilbert’s cancer diagnosis influenced the majority of the songs on this album, but the overall message of hope and leaving behind a musical legacy are also prevalent here. Gilbert admitted, “I didn’t want this to be the ‘cancer record’ originally. But when we went on tour and people started hearing the story and connecting to it, I gave up on trying to control the narrative. Not all bands are dealt these cards, but we were. Let’s take these songs and help the disease get awareness and raise money for a cause that’s working on education and research for my rare cancer.” Make The Most Of It features several new songs, seven to be exact, with some reimagined acoustic versions added to end of the record to round things out. The reimagined songs came from their live set at Liberty Hall in Franklin, Tennessee, which came as a surprise to fans and myself alike. This seemed like a golden moment for NFG to give their fans acoustic studio versions of some of their favorite songs of all time, but instead it ends up as a missed opportunity.

New Found Glory has never shied away from their sensitive side, whether it comes from a pop-punk power ballad or reimagining their singles with an acoustic version. This side of them worked best on Coming Home, but the band has showed moments of promise throughout their tenure. New Found Glory have been called many things over their musical career, but “survivors” and “pop-punk legends” seem most appropriate now.

There’s nothing like pop-punk in the summer. When the sun is shining, and the air is warm, it’s the perfect time of year to drive around with your windows down, blasting some New Found Glory. During a normal summer, a new New Found Glory album could become the soundtrack of a season spent with friends, going on vacation, tailgating for concerts, and family BBQs. Summer 2020 is going to be a much different summer than we’re used to. Fortunately for long time fans of New Found Glory, you have a new album for you to  lose yourself in for 48 minutes.

New Found Glory is back with Forever + Ever x Infinity, their tenth studio album. It’s a record that finds the band going back to their roots of punk, hardcore and post-hardcore instead of continuing to explore the lighter pop elements that frequented 2017’s Makes Me Sick. If this sounds familiar, it’s basically the same thing that happened when they elected to ditch the mellow and softer sounds of 2006’s Coming Home to return to rock/punk with 2009’s Not Without A Fight. If you were a fan of Makes Me Sick and were hoping to see the band continue down this road, you might be disappointed with this release. However, if you’re a fan of NFG albums like Catalyst and Resurrection, you’ll walk away pretty happy with what you hear.

In 2006, New Found Glory took their biggest risk as a band by releasing Coming Home, an album that largely abandoned the band’s customary pop-punk/easycore stylings. Produced by Thon Panunzio, Coming Home introduced more straight-forward rock elements that included keys, pianos, and strings – not surprising considering Panunzio has worked with some of the biggest rock legends of all time (Ozzy, Bruce, Joan Jett, etc.). Perhaps unsurprisingly, the album fell flat commercially and was also the band’s last album to be released on a major label. But creatively and critically it was a success as Coming Home has been regarded as the band’s most daring effort of their career and let the pop-punk world know that New Found Glory would never make the same album twice. It also planted the seeds of what was to come ten years later.

Read More “New Found Glory – Makes Me Sick”

I can’t say Resurrection is inappropriately titled. New Found Glory’s eighth studio LP is, ugh, a ~*return to form*~ in just about every way. This always happens when the South Florida now-quartet faces some sort of adversity — they regress toward the mean. Coming Home was creative and about as daring as New Found Glory has ever gotten but it didn’t work out the way it was supposed to, so they wrote Not Without A Fight, the most polar opposite of Coming Home possible while still remaining in the very specifically defined realm of pop-punk inhabited by New Found Glory music. Now, guitarist and lyricist Steve Klein gets kicked out of the band and we get Resurrection, which is nothing more than a confirmation that yes, in fact, New Found Glory is still a band, they still exist, and yes, in fact, they can still write New Found Glory songs. Great!

Not so great is the fact that new-school pop-punk’s forefathers have regressed so far toward their own mean that they’ve essentially parodied themselves. Resurrection is significantly more enjoyable for me when I pretend it’s a band of people I don’t know jokingly writing songs pretending to be New Found Glory. This is now a band whose career is driven almost entirely by nostalgia; they draw crowds consisting of either young pop-punk fans who listen to them because they feel like they’re supposed to, or slightly older people who want to hear the hits and don’t care much for new material. That’s perfectly fine: Taking Back Sunday is currently romping across that same exact career arc, but while TBS is taking it upon themselves to change their sound, New Found Glory is retreating for whatever comes easiest. The songs on Resurrection have already been written by this band dozens of times before.

It’s almost like this review doesn’t have to be written. A shiny, freshly made batch of 11 pop-punk songs recommended for people who love pop-punk songs.

Or, in other words, a new New Found Glory record. Recommended if you like: New Found Glory.

Perhaps the most consistent band in the history of a genre they helped make extremely popular, New Found Glory’s seventh studio full-length, Radiosurgery, is exactly what you think it is. It’s 11 (actually, 10) wonderful gems meant for playing: 1. With the windows down; 2. With the volume turned up; 3. During the summer. Predictable words about a predictable record.

If I sound like I’m criticizing Radiosurgery, I’m only doing it half-heartedly. Aside from the question mark of Coming Home, New Found Glory has very rarely tweaked its style since its 1999 debut, Nothing Gold Can Stay. And why would they ever change? Creeping up on the 12th anniversary of that first release, New Found Glory has already almost doubled the timeline of relevancy compared to many of their peers. They’re one of the most-loved band in the genre and 12 years is a lot longer than the number suggests. Fans have loved every NFG album and have come out in droves to seem them perform live. Radiosurgeryisn’t going to change that.

It’s easy to answer the question of “who’s your favorite band?” when it’s asked. After eleven years, six full lengths, and two EPs, New Found Glory have yet to let me down on anything they’ve ever recorded. Tip of the Iceberg, their third EP, and first in 8 years, is no exception. For those who wrote New Found Glory off after their 2006 release Coming Home, get ready to eat your words, because this EP showcases everything people love about NFG and more, as it is some of their best material to date.

Produced and engineered by Paul Miner (Death By Stereo), New Found Glory have taken on a familiar but somewhat different sound on Tip of the Iceberg by creating three hardcore punk songsthat can be compared to Catalyst’s “Intro.” One of the most exciting things about this band is waiting to hear the vocals of Jordan Pundik on a new song that I haven’t heard yet, because with every new album, his voice keeps getting better, and with this release, it’s his best vocal performance yet. I was a bit skeptic at first as to how his voice would sound with the music but it turned out to work incredibly well. Each of the new original songs are very brief, but they’ll definitely leave a mark. “Tip of the Iceberg” is a great opener which will stamp the lyrics “This is just the tip of the iceberg / No bone in my body tells me I deserve her” into your brain, while “Dig My Own Grave” is the hardest of the three and features a sing-along chorus and vocals from Chad Gilbert during the bridge. My favorite track “If You Don’t Love Me” sounds like a title off Coming Home, but it’s probably one of the catchiest and fastest songs the band has done.

The majority of movies that make a lot of money at the box office are followed up with a sequel: Jurassic Park, Spider-Man, Star Wars, etc. New Found Glory, a band that has already accomplished many things, are trying to make this concept work on record. So, the Coral Springs, Florida, quintet hopped into their De Lorean, signed with the label who jump started their career (Drive Thru for this one record deal), and created the sequel to the fan-favorite 2000 EP, From The Screen To Your Stereo. 

This time around, NFG recorded an entire album’s worth of covers from famous movies, such as Donnie Darko, The Breakfast Club, and Napoleon Dynamite. The album also features a large list of guests, featuring the likes of Chris Carrabba, Max Bemis, Will Pugh, Patrick Stump, Adam Lazzara, Sheri Dupree, and Lisa Loeb. The end result is eleven covers that perfectly display the band at their finest: energy, fun, and full out effort. The production of Thom Panunzio (whom produced 2006’s Coming Home) and the band is nearly perfect. You won’t find a better cover album on the market.

New Found Glory have always been a musical-staple of my summers. Since the release of Nothing Gold Can Stay, so many years ago, it seems that when the weather gets warm the pop-punk goodness of NFG is always close in tow. However, the band’s latest album hits us as the summer months fade and the air bends to the onslaught of fall. Incidentally, the band’s musical thermometer is still intact. Instead of an album full of summer-fist-pumping-anthems they’ve released the perfect music by which to watch the leaves fall from the trees.

The changing of seasons seems to be the perfect metaphor for New Found Glory; however, it’s important to note that while the color of leaves may change, the underlying nature never does.