To start, I’ll say I have almost nothing against Fall Out Boy, or Four Year Strong, who I’m about to compare them too. Fall Out Boy is a pop band that uses thei hardcore roots to write catchy songs that appeal to a wide audience. Four Year Strong has done the same thing and they are really good at it. Even when I saw them play at a church in Medway I knew they really were good at working a crowd and playing music that was fun for everyone to hear.

But I suddenly understand why so many people got frustrated with FOB once they made the major label switch. FOB, I’m sure wanting to maintain some underground cred would put their favorite bands on their line ups. Old and new hardcore bands that still stay quite below the major label status. FYS did the same thing last night at their holiday show, and I gotta say, it made me pretty frustrated that I had to go to a FYS show packed with teenage girls who wanted to stand as close to the stage as possible the whole show while people who wanted to mosh to Bane and the other bands were stuck with middle school push pits.

Essentially bands like FOB and FYS draw lots of outsiders to “hardcore” shows. That isn’t necessarily bad. Hardcore itself has grown so much in popularity recently. But the culture of hardcore is always at risk the more outsiders come in. So often people want to be there cause it makes them look cool. They work to have the right styles and haircuts but when the music plays they pose and try and look cool and have no feel for the music. I thought it was interesting how the frontmen for both Bane and Therefore I Am tried to incorporate messages about what hardcore really is for this mostly FYS outsider audience about how punk rock and hardcore are about the music, and how this is supposed to build a community, not just a place to look cool. So only time will tell how FYS and their fans will be recieved in the future by those in the hardcore community. Of course FYS will always have a place in Worcester hardcore, but it is likely they will undergo the same ostrcism from the hardcore scene FOB did because of the infiltration from their new audiences.