Story Of The Year

Story of the Year has spent nearly three decades shaping the sound of American alternative rock. Formed in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1995 under the name 67 North, the band began life playing nu metal, morphed into Big Blue Monkey in 1998, and finally adopted the name Story of the Year in 2002 after releasing their self-titled EP on the indie label Criterion Records. Years later, on their podcast Page Avenue Crew, the members admitted they had invented the story about a blues band with the same name — they simply did not care for their old moniker.

The breakthrough arrived eight years after the band first formed, with the 2003 major label debut Page Avenue on Maverick. The album produced two defining singles, “Until the Day I Die” and “Anthem of Our Dying Day,” cementing the group within the emo, screamo, post-hardcore, and pop-punk scenes. A second album, In the Wake of Determination, followed in 2005, and after leaving Maverick the band signed to Epitaph Records for The Black Swan on April 22, 2008, and 2010’s The Constant.

Their creative independence deepened with the crowd-funded fifth album Wolves: the pledge campaign launched in November 2016 and was fully funded in under three days. Produced with Aaron Sprinkle and mixed by Tom Lord-Alge and J Hall, the record was released through PledgeMusic on December 1, 2017, with wide release on December 8. In March 2023, now a four-piece with bassist Adam Russell back in the fold, they released Tear Me to Pieces and followed it with a world tour spanning 2023–2024. Influenced by acts from BoySetsFire and At the Drive-In to Guns N’ Roses and Sunny Day Real Estate, the band — with a seventh album, A.R.S.O.N., slated for 2026 — remains a resonant force in rock.