Sophie's Floorboard: Defeater

Defeater are a melodic hardcore band from Boston, Massachusetts. They began in 2004, though used different names (most notably "Sluts") and had slightly different line-ups until 2008, when they became Defeater and the band that they are known as being today. They put out their first album under the moniker Defeater in 2008, titled Travels, on Topshelf Records before switching to Bridge Nine Records, which re-issued the album and put out all of their subsequent material.

Defeater are particularly known for their lyrics, which tell the story of a family living in America post-WWII. Each album focuses on a particular character, though the plots, characters, images, and certain lines tend to overlap and reoccur, which creates a consistency and ties the albums together. On Travels, the main character is the youngest brother/son. On Lost Ground, the main character is not actually part of the family, but the character does have an interaction with the youngest brother on a song from their debut ("Prophet In Plain Clothes"), and this EP is essentially the back story to their exchange. Empty Days & Sleepless Nights follows the older brother/son, and their newest album Letters Home is the story of the father. I don't really want to give away the stories in case anybody has yet to read/listen to them, but I will highly recommend that you do so, because they are quite captivating. Maybe I will do a summary thing for each album later, since it'd be pretty fun for me to do. I guess I could just add spoiler tags or something, if anybody would be interested in reading something like that.

When Defeater began, they got a lot of Modern Of Life Is War comparisons, for good reason of course. They did sound like them, therefore sounded amazing. For the record, they weren't really a "rip-off" band, they just had a lot in common. Defeater definitely had something great of their own going on, and continued to grow into that. They've always been really tight, and have managed to balance pummeling, rolling rhythms with melodic guitar lines, all the while fitting Derek's (vocalist) intense vocals at the forefront of this soundscape. They also experiment with some acoustic music, which is mostly the brainchild of Derek. On Travels, the second portion of "Prophet In Plain Clothes" is a country/folk song played solely on an acoustic guitar and topped only be Derek's croon. The last four songs on ED&SN are also acoustic-based, and sung instead of screamed/sung harshly. Apparently he was doing the acoustic thing before he was even in Defeater, and his solo acoustic project Alcoa has taken off in recent years.

I guess that's it to say, most people are probably already somewhat familiar with this band. They put on a really good live show, and people seem to really get into them. Enjoy.