Post-Nothing Rock: Footballhead-Before I Die (2024)

Why I Like It:

Ok, so my intention for September was to do a write-up of the band Foxing, either their latest self-titled album or Nearer My God, whichever I thought was better. However, while getting the new Foxing album ready for a late afternoon walk with the dog, the song "Before I Die" was queued up from my last listening session on Spotify. It was a song I added to a playlist of songs I've enjoyed from 2024 (thanks Spotify AI DJ for introducing me to this song btw). I decided to let the song play out, then promptly started the mini album- this is how the band refers to the collection of songs- and let the whole thing play. I only ended up getting through half of the Foxing album for that walk. Now this blogpost is for the band Footballhead, sorry Foxing but I will get to you!

Since that walk I've been asking myself, what makes this band instantly stand out? Enough to detour me from the original plans of this blogpost? To research this head scratcher, I combed through reviews that other music writers wrote up for Footballhead and intently listened to interviews with the band. A couple reviews basically contextualized all my thoughts and another interview illuminated the band's musical influences and interests (see links below). Turns out a big component of their influence was butt rock. Yes, butt rock.

Now when I was teenager, butt rock was a huge part of my music catalogue and took up a high percentage of my mixtapes. During the interview with Q101, band members Ryan Nolen and Snow Ellet (who has his own solo albums that are great) went through their Mount Rushmore of butt rock bands. And holly molly did this bring back a slue of memories and I went through a deep dive into bands that I haven't thought about since the early 2000s. After a plunge into the butt rock rabbit hole, I've come up with my own Mount Rushmore (highly biased from nostalgia):

Fuel-Something Like Human (2000)
Shinedown-Leave a Whisper (2003)
Three Days Grace-One-X (2006)
Crossfade-Crossfade (2004)

Listening to Before I die again, after this thorough research, it dawned on me why this music stands out. It takes some of best parts of butt rock- like the start of "Crushing Me" sounding like the start of Breaking Benjamin's "Breath" and the end sounding like Filter's "The Only Way Is The Long Way"- that originally evoked those teenage emotions through memorable hard hitting riffs and hooks.

Huh, do I actually really like butt rock? Maybe I still do because Footballhead is embracing and using the genre, and I really like this music. What a mind trip of a blogpost this has been!

I must add, this is only one ingredient that makes Footballhead what they are though, the other part is Snow Ellet's indie pop-punk rock roots (taken from his profile description). Which I think brings in an interesting mix and makes the softer parts of the songs stand out and compliments the harder rock sections. I mentioned it already but seriously check out his solo material.

So the conclusion of this blogpost is I think I like butt rock a lot more than I previously thought and shouldn't hold onto preconceived judgments of genres. The irony is that I constantly post about emo bands that I love, which is another genre with preconceived prejudices.