The Dangerous Summer

The melodic emo group the Dangerous Summer first took shape toward the end of the 2000s, fresh out of high school and devoted to an emotionally charged, hook-driven style of rock. Following their signing to Hopeless Records, the Baltimore act drew broad notice through the 2009 album Reach for the Sun and multiple Warped Tour slots, only to disband in 2014. After a four-year break, the members returned with the 2018 release The Dangerous Summer and Mother Nature the following year. Having relocated to Denver and refreshed the roster, the band resurfaced in 2022 with their seventh full-length, Coming Home.

The project originated in 2006 in Ellicott City, Maryland, when the musicians were finishing their final year of secondary school. The initial lineup consisted of lead singer and bassist A.J. Perdomo, guitarist Bryan Czap, drummer Tyler Minsberg, and guitarist Cody Payne, who had recently returned from a short stay in Florida. Drawing their moniker from Ernest Hemingway’s well-known novel and citing the Starting Line, Third Eye Blind, U2, and Name Taken as reference points, they entered the studio that December to capture their earliest material. The resulting EP, There Is No Such Thing as Science, came out independently in January 2007 in a pressing limited to 1,000 copies; whenever academics permitted, they promoted it alongside the Ataris, Cartel, and Hit the Lights.

Friends in All Time Low helped pass the recording to Hopeless Records in California, leading to a contract that spring. Three members graduated that year, after which the label issued the second EP, If You Could Only Keep Me Alive, in August; it combined four tracks from the prior release with three newly recorded songs. Their debut album, Reach for the Sun, appeared on Hopeless in 2009. Paul Leavitt produced the set, which peaked at number 42 on the Billboard Heatseekers chart. A more somber and developed follow-up, War Paint, surfaced in 2011 and entered the Billboard 200, after which the band toured with Lower Than Atlantis.

Around the same period Minsberg and Czap departed, with Ben Cato and Matt Kennedy stepping in on drums and guitar. The revised configuration’s opening effort, Golden Record, arrived in summer 2013. Not long afterward Perdomo exited, pointing to persistent friction with Payne and the arrival of his first child as decisive factors; the remaining members then announced an indefinite hiatus. In February 2017 Payne received a felony conviction tied to burglary and was sentenced to one year of incarceration. The other musicians regrouped later that year and began work on a self-titled fourth album, which emerged in January 2018. Another LP, Mother Nature, produced by Sam Pura, followed in 2019 and concluded the group’s long association with Hopeless Records.

Just before the worldwide pandemic they settled in Denver, Colorado, and issued the self-released EP All That Is Left of the Blue Sky in 2020. Perdomo and Kennedy subsequently added drummer Christian Zawacki and former touring guitarist Josh Withenshaw before signing with Rude Records. The Dangerous Summer’s seventh studio album, Coming Home, was released in mid-2022.