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Fireworks
Alternative Press - Tim Karan on 10/3/09 @ 6:43 PM - altpress.comHQ: Metro Detroit, MI
NOW PLAYING: All I Have To Offer Is My Own Confusion (Triple Crown)
WHY YOU SHOULD KNOW 'EM: They're ripping it up like it's '99, but making you think like it's '84.
YOU LIKE? YOU'LL LIKE: New Found Glory / The Movielife / Set Your Goals
STORY: Sam Sutherland
PHOTO: Nicole Rork
"Everyone died at our school. I think we are the only ones who are still alive." Kyle O'Neil, bassist for pop-punk quintet Fireworks, is making light of the unexpectedly serious turn in the conversation. The band members open up about their long-running friendship and shared experiences growing up in the suburbs of Detroit, revealing some dark, dark shit: stories of suicides and intense bullying. It's a candid set of revelations that defines the honest nature of Fireworks' music, a mixture of pop-punk melodies and hardcore substance.
After forming in 2005, Fireworks-O'Neil, vocalist David Mackinder, guitarists Brett Jones and Chris Mojan, and drummer Tymm Rengers-hit the ground running, releasing the EP We Are Everywhere on Massachusetts-based label Run For Cover in 2006 and touring relentlessly ever since with the likes of Polar Bear Club and the Swellers. Their tireless work ethic attracted the attention of Triple Crown Records, which signed the group last year and afforded them the chance to work with New Found Glory guitarist Chad Gilbert for their debut full-length, All I Have To Offer Is My Own Confusion. "Chad tore apart our songs," says O'Neil. "He wasn't changing our parts, but he was taking what we wrote and re-arranging it and making it better." Gilbert helped the band "trim the fat," as Jones says, which freed the band to bring their musical and lyrical strengths to the forefront. The resulting album is unapologetic in its catchiness and equally unrelenting in its tackling of tough subjects that aren't often the stuff of Warped Tour-ready pop-punk. "I Support Same Sex Marriage" examines the abstract concept of religious belief while making a simple, powerful statement with its title alone, while "Closet Weather" takes an uncomfortable and atypical look at suicide.
"We grew up with suicide everywhere. I knew seven kids in high school who killed themselves; my girlfriend's dad killed himself," says Jones. "['Closet Weather'] is about this really bad guy who used to beat the shit out of us. When we found out he killed himself... How do you feel after someone you hated kills themselves? They were still shitty. The fact that they killed themselves just makes you angrier because they're not even around to be an asshole."
All I Have To Offer is far from heavy-handed, though; it's an album about growing up and making the best of your circumstances, something the guys in Fireworks have been doing since day one in a suburban expanse that is sometimes as deadly as the city that spawned it.
"When you're young, you think you've got the world figured out and you're going to grab it by its nuts and teach it a lesson," says Jones. "When you get older, you realize you need health insurance and you're using all the money your parents gave you to go to college to go on tour. But when it comes down to it, we're doing this shit. And it makes you appreciate your roots."
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