Alexisonfire

Alexisonfire surfaced in 2001 as the band that introduced emo and post-hardcore to mainstream listeners in Canada, attaining commercial traction the next year through their self-titled debut, which achieved platinum certification. Later records Watch Out!, Crisis, and Old Crows/Young Cardinals likewise reached platinum status domestically. A series of lineup shifts and internal conflicts triggered the ensemble’s dissolution in 2012. The group reconvened briefly in 2015 for multiple performances and issued two standalone singles in 2019. Three years afterward they delivered their fifth studio album, Otherness, which had been anticipated for some time.

The band originated in Saint Catharines, Ontario, during 2001. Frontman George Pettit, guitarists and vocalists Dallas Green and Wade MacNeil, bassist Steele, and drummer Jesse Ingelevics entered the scene in 2002 with a self-titled release on the Toronto-based Distort label. The album performed strongly throughout Canada, securing considerable airplay on the MuchMusic network. That visibility secured a distribution arrangement with the established American hardcore and punk outlet Equal Vision, which put out the band’s second album in June 2004. Watch Out! expanded on its predecessor with greater ambition, blending passages of melodic elegance alongside the taut intensity already associated with Alexisonfire. The following year Ingelevics departed, succeeded by former Jersey drummer Jordan Hastings. A split release with fellow Canadians Moneen surfaced on Vagrant that November. Green simultaneously pursued acoustic solo work, introducing the City and Colour moniker with 2005’s Sometimes.

By summer 2006 Alexisonfire had joined Vagrant’s official roster, appearing on the Warped Tour’s secondary stage and unveiling their third album, Crisis, that August. The group then performed at the Reading and Leeds festivals in the U.K. before mounting a lengthy Canadian tour in the fall. MacNeil soon launched his own side project, Black Lungs, following Green’s City and Colour path; the new outfit debuted in 2008 with Send Flowers.

The fourth album, Old Crows/Young Cardinals, predictably succeeded in Canada after its 2009 release while also securing the band’s strongest U.S. chart placement to date. An experimental EP, Dog’s Blood, arrived in 2010. By year’s end, however, Green chose to exit. MacNeil’s departure came shortly afterward as he joined British hardcore act Gallows, halting the band’s attempts to complete a fifth album. Alexisonfire regrouped in 2012 for a farewell tour intended to give fans proper closure, then released a box set compiling their catalog in 2013. A further reunion tour was confirmed in March 2015, encompassing prominent festival appearances throughout the summer. In 2019 the band issued “Familiar Drugs,” their first new track in nearly a decade. Two additional singles, “Complicit” and “Season of the Flood,” followed in 2019 and 2020, respectively, before the group unveiled Otherness, their fifth full-length, in 2022.