New Found Glory

By the end of 2001, New Found Glory was one of [i]those bands[/i] on the Warped Tour, humble but hurtling toward an unsuspecting Top 40 audience. Now with three consecutive albums under their belts — [i]New Found Glory[/i], [i]Sticks and Stones[/i], [i]Catalyst[/i] — they've managed the tough task of going mainstream without losing their core fan base, their fast-and-furious sound caught somewhere between pop-punk perfection and the band's ravenous hardcore roots. Y'know, twitchy tracks, like "My Friends Over You," "Situations," "Head on Collision," and "Hit or Miss," that treat your speakers like a zero-gravity tour of the moon.

But heat-seeking hooks aren't the only secret weapon in New Found Glory's back catalog — as our Next Steps proves, Florida's finest have an ever-evolving sound that's impossible to pin down.

Contrary to popular belief, New Found Glory is capable of much more than cheeky popcorn-flick covers ("The Glory of Love," "The Promise" — as backed by Dashboard Confessional) and melodic ditties of the pop-punk persuasion. While their 1999 debut, [i]Nothing Gold Can Stay[/i], pours honey-dipped harmonies over emo-tastic journal entries, the group's fifth full-length, [i]Coming Home[/i], breaks out a handclap-driven rhythm section and finely tuned acoustic ("Too Good to Be"), deftly-churned — and incredibly catchy — modern rock ("Coming Home"), and piano-coated harmonies that hit as hard as a heavy-metal hook to the forehead ("Hold My Hand").

In case you've avoided keeping score, New Found Glory have tightened and tweaked their proven pop-punk formula for more than a decade. That's not including guitarist Chad Gilbert's stint screaming in the highly influential hardcore band Shai Hulud, whose thrash tendencies can be heard powering such super-charged NFG favorites as "Tip of the Iceberg," "Tell Tale Heart," "Understatement," and "Truth of My Youth." Testosterone-fueled skate park anthems aside, the band isn't afraid to show its sensitive side, either, whether it's through nuanced new wave ("It's Not Your Fault") or pure, unadulterated power balladry ("Head on Collision," "I Don't Wanna Know").