City of Caterpillar

In 2000 the post-hardcore quartet City of Caterpillar first surfaced, merging screamo textures with expansive post-rock passages. Their self-titled debut arrived on Level Plane two years later, yet internal tensions prompted the group’s dissolution in 2003. Occasional reunion performances resumed in 2016, eventually leading the original members back into the studio; two decades after the debut, they completed the follow-up Mystic Sisters and released it in late 2022.

The band coalesced in Richmond, Virginia, in 2001 around Brandon Evans on vocals and guitar, Jeff Kane on guitar, Kevin Longendyke on vocals and bass, and Ryan Parrish on drums. All four musicians had previously played in local acts rooted in the regional hardcore underground. City of Caterpillar fused screamo, hardcore, and post-rock into lengthy, atmospheric pieces that routinely collapsed into visceral hardcore outbursts. Their first appearance came via a 2000 split single with System 2600; the following year they issued another split, this time with pg. 99, whose ranks overlapped with their own. That record marked their initial release on the New York imprint Level Plane, also home to Melt Banana, Racebannon, and Envy. The quartet tracked their debut album in Maryland, and Level Plane issued City of Caterpillar in 2002. Critics lauded its inventive blend of screamo and post-rock, and the album later earned recognition as a cornerstone of the post-screamo movement. After extensive touring throughout the United States, Europe, Japan, and Canada, mounting disagreements dissolved the lineup the next year, sending its members into separate projects.

Revived in 2016 following years of reform requests, the original four members played four sold-out concerts while Robotic Empire prepared a remastered reissue of the debut. Additional shows ensued, prompting the band to capture the long-unreleased instrumental “Driving Spain Up a Wall,” an outtake from the first album that had surfaced at only a handful of early performances. Although the group maintained a sporadic concert schedule worldwide, the experience of reconvening encouraged them to begin work on a second album. Self-produced and mixed by Jack Shirley, whose credits include Deafheaven and Jeff Rosenstock, the dense, wide-ranging Mystic Sisters appeared on Relapse Records in late 2022.