The story of BEN QUAD is punctuated by moments of randomness: a chance meeting via Craigslist bonding over bands like Microwave and Modern Baseball. An out-of-nowhere namedrop from indie tastemaker Ian Cohen lauding their debut album, 2022’s I’m Scared That’s All There Is. A one-off sonic curveball that somehow turned into their biggest song–and, without them realizing it at the time, a brand-new freedom to reinvent themselves.
But serendipity has done more than bring Ben Quad here, to the release of WISHER, their first LP for Pure Noise Records: It’s taught them to thrive inside the unpredictable, to harness a no-limits musical mentality and self-effacing sense of humor and turn it into some of the most resonant, captivating emo of today. Well, actually, post-emo.
“This is our love letter to the genre,” singer/guitarist Sam Wegrzynski says of the album. “It’s an amalgamation of all the shit emo kids like: screaming, synths, pop sensibilities all mixed withcrazy emotional stuff. What’s post-emo if not the next evolution?”
The Oklahoma City-based quartet have always been evolving. I’m Scared That’s All There Is cemented them as a force in the modern emo movement, landing them on bills with the likes of Hot Mulligan and Knuckle Puck. The standalone single “You’re Part of It” added a harder, screamo-tinged edge to their sound, while an outpouring of support to a social media shitpost declaring “If ‘You’re Part of It’ gets 10K streams by Wednesday, we’ll put out a screamo EP” took them even further down that road with Ephemera, their 2024 EP. (The song currentlyboasts more than 4 million streams.) Now, with Wisher, the band deliver a true follow-up to theirdebut that fully embraces everything that’s followed it since.
The 10 songs on Wisher find Wegrzynski, Edgar Viveros (leadguitar), Henry Shields (bass/backing vocals) and Isaac Young (drums) pulling from every corner of their recordcollections: jagged punk riffs, glassy math-rock, sticky pop hooks and glitchy production that push toward something futuristic. But rather thana scattershot collage, these elements recur asmotifs–a melody here, a guitar line there–stitched together with purpose and intention.
First single “It’s Just A Title” serves up a groove factory complemented by smooth vocals andlifting keyboards, while the frantic “Painless” rips through speakers with the ferocity and melodicism of They’re Only Chasing Safety-era Underoath, if their guitarists spent more time studying Midwest emo than metalcore. “Did You Decide to Skip Arts and Crafts” welcomesTreaty Oak Revival singer Sam Canty–and a well-placed banjo–onto a genre-blending Tumblr-era throwback, “Classic Case of Dead Guy on the Ground” ascends with a preposterously sublime falsetto hook, and the brooding “West of West” brings things full circlefor the band with a cameo from Microwave’s Nathan Hardy.
Leaving the Sooner State for New Jersey, the band connected with producer Jon Markson (The Story So Far, Drug Church) to bring the album to life, taking up residence at his farm/studio fortheir first real studio experience. Amidst barnyard animals and peaceful countryside, the idyllic setting provided the perfect backdrop–full of time and space–to find themselves and the next evolution of their sound.
“Our older stuff was done driving to and from places on the weekend,” Wegrzynski says. “But this time, we had access to rooms full of instruments like banjos and sleigh bells and more ampheads than I could ever imagine. I think it’s a change in sound because it’s a change in scenery. How can you be sad in a beautiful place like that?”
That shift in perspective carries directly into Wisher’s subject matter. In stark contrast to the heavy existential questions the band posed on I’m Scared That’s All There Is, the songs here aren’t about survival but rather savoring life’s small victories–the moments that might not feellike much at the time but can snowball into something bigger if you only allow yourself to find the joy in them. In many ways, it’s much like Ben Quad themselves, their own story built on a string of seemingly minor twists of fate that’s only been amplified by a relentless DIY attitude andinstinct to chase every idea, no matter how improbable.
