Strung Out live at The Underworld Camden

The Underworld Camden proudly presents:
Strung Out

Plus: Spoilers


Six years. It's longer than the president sits in office or most people spend in college. In the music industry, it's practically an eternity. Bands form, blow up and break up in that time period; new, disturbingly awful trends develop, old forms of media die out, social networks spread their insidious seed through shiny handheld devices no one actually needs but everybody wants.

Six years is also the amount of time that has passed since Strung Out's last album. The Southern California tech-punk quintet had been so reliable for two decades-write, record, tour, repeat cycle roughly once every two years-that to go this long without new music felt like cause for alarm. Frontman Jason Cruz shared similar feelings.

"You get to a point where you decide if you're going to go on or stop," he admits. "Everyone kind of just lived life for a little bit. I think that's pretty important if you consider yourself a songwriter or an artist of any kind. You have to live and experience other things in your life to have something to write about, to give value to what you're singing about."
Cruz and Co. were able to put their time off to good use, focusing their energy on the creation of Transmission.Alpha.Delta, out March 24 on their longtime label Fat Wreck Chords. The album didn't come together easily, though; according to Cruz, writing was a yearlong process, as was recording. "We have an excess of ideas, and everyone in the band likes to put their elbows up and fight for their ideas," he explains. I think that conflict is healthy. It's all part of collaborating." The process was further knotted by adding in another strong voice in producer Kyle Black, whose previous production credits ranged from Paramore to Comeback Kid.