It is not unusual for punk bands to congregate around a single influence or set of influences. For as much as punk pretends to be revolutionary and different, the vast majority of it just sounds like other bands. The Ramones, the "first" punk band, just ran '50s pop/rock through bigger amplifiers and distorted guitars and sang about edgier topics. Now, there is a whole genre of punk referred to as "Ramonescore," featuring notable acts such as The Queers, Screeching Weasel, The Lillingtons, and Teenage Bottlerocket, who even managed to directly steal the lyrical content of an early Ramones song.
Punk music is, almost by definition, a simple form of music, so it can be difficult to sound unique within its confines. This has always been an issue of varying severity. At its most acceptable, bands simply take the influence of earlier bands and modernize it before expanding their influence and moving on. At its worst, bands rip off other bands' sounds and release the same albums year after year. Many of the bands on Fat Wreck Chords in the '90s sounded a whole lot like NOFX, and Tim Armstrong is content to sign Rancid rip-offs like Left Alone and Time Again to his Hellcat Records label. (Armstrong even guests on their songs, despite the fact that they clearly worship the guy. Weird.)
The really special bands in punk have managed to invent whole subgenres that have blown up since then. Black Flag invented hardcore, The Misfits invented horrorpunk, Descendents invented modern pop/punk, Operation Ivy invented skacore, Rancid invented streetpunk, and so on. Since 2000, two bands have defined the shape of punk to come more than any other: Hot Water Music and Against Me!, who both, coincidentally (or maybe not), came from Gainesville, Florida.
Hot Water Music, who adapted a lot from earlier bands like Leatherface, essentially invented what has alternately been termed "beardpunk," "gruff punk," and "orgcore," after the sound's popularity among the readers and writers of Punknews.org. For a while, it seemed as if every new band sounded like they had listened to way too much HWM growing up. Some bands, such as Alkaline Trio, The Lawrence Arms, and The Gaslight Anthem had clearly listened to quite a bit of Hot Water Music in their younger years, but made the sound their own.
However, many bands, like Red City Radio, Nothington, Iron Chic, and countless others, felt no shame in jumping directly onto the bandwagon. Unfortunately, most left behind the technical precision of HWM's rhythm section that made them so special, instead simply adopting their heavy, anthemic sound and rough, manly gang vocals. Some have even become influencers themselves, such as Dillinger Four, whose throaty, bass-heavy brand of orgcore has informed Banner Pilot, Off With Their Heads, and Dear Landlord. It now seems as if every punk band wears flannel and rocks a full beard.
Against Me! further pushed orgcore forward while also almost singlehandedly inventing the modern version of the folk/punk genre. Shortly following AM!'s ascension to the punk mainstream, folk/punk was dominating the new music landscape. Entire record labels were focused on the stuff, with new bands copying not just AM!'s sound, but also their DIY mindset and general aesthetic. Notable acts such as Fake Problems and Cobra Skulls were labeled AM! rip-offs when they debuted, although, to their credit, they have both since expanded their sound considerably.
AM! abandoned the sound they created almost as quickly as they founded it, but in their absence, Andrew Jackson Jihad, Ghost Mice, and Defiance, Ohio took up the torch. They absorbed the folk side of the sound and ran with it, including traditional folk instruments and producing a decidedly more upbeat version of the early AM! sound, complete with whiny vocals and much less serious lyrics.
All of this is a long-winded way of explaining that punk has always been a music that goes through certain trends. Obviously, many varieties of punk exist at the same time, but the popular boom of new bands often seems to convene around a similar sound that changes every few years. The currently booming sound is that of Weezer.
Booming is probably not an adjective often associated with Weezer, but nevertheless, pop/punk bands have been increasingly turning to the Weezer goldmine from the early '90s. Many bands are digging in the '90s alt-rock realm and modernizing the sound in their own way, but a lot of the attention seems to be focused on pre-hiatus Weezer.
While I was not nearly musically conscious in 1994 and 1996, the years of Weezer's first two releases, I can feel the band's influence still very present in the music of this up-and-coming generation of pop/punk bands. Their unique use of soft/loud dynamics, heavily distorted guitars, plodding riffs, catchy melodies, falsetto backing vocals, and self-deprecating, nerdy lyrics has proven to be quite the treasure for new bands looking to update a classic sound.
I first noticed the beginnings of the trend in 2011 when Bomb the Music Industry! released Vacation, an album that was equal parts punk, Brian Wilson, and Weezer. The Sidekicks followed less than a year later with Awkward Breeds, an indie-punk record clearly influenced by Weezer and other '90s bands (like Third Eye Blind). The trend continued as I discovered bands like Sundials and Joyce Manor. This was all harmless and fun for a while, but this year, the trend has simply gotten out of control.
Lately, the trend has been nearly epidemic. Instead of adopting their sound as an influence, bands have simply been including Weezer songs on their albums. The Menzingers' recent single "In Remission" is a little more shouty than Weezer ever got, but the first half of that song is straight-up Weezer. (That the video is a near copy of the video for "Undone (The Sweater Song)," save the dogs, doesn't exactly help discourage the comparison.) Besides that song and the Smashing Pumpkins song that precedes it on the album, the band's songs are very much their own.
Masked Intruder's "Weirdo" captures both the sound and the spirit of several early Weezer songs (think Pinkerton), while the rest of the album is essentially a Ramonescore album (full circle, see?). Chumped, a female-fronted pop/punk band, just released a Weezer song called "Hot 97 Summer Jam," which may or may not be a reference to the year Weezer started going downhill. BtMI! singer Jeff Rosenstock's side project, Antarctigo Vespucci (which also features Chris Farren of Fake Problems), released a mini-album of Weezer songs earlier this year, although that shouldn't really surprise anyone who follows those bands (BtMI! has covered both of Weezer's first two albums in full at separate concerts).
Beyond that, bands like Meridian are getting in on the more melancholy side of the Weezer trend. Even though singer Max Stern's two bands had previously associated almost exclusively with post-hardcore/twinkly emo and folk/rock, he threw a couple Weezer songs in on Meridian's latest record. (Although some YouTube digging reveals that his passion for Weezer had presented itself earlier.) The Swellers got a little Weezer-y on their latest effort, and You Blew It!, another 2010s emo band, even released a 5-song EP of Weezer covers, titled You Blue It!, earlier this year (which feels a little half-assed, now that I think about it).
Like I said, it's epidemic. Where will this trend stop? Is it time to add Weezercore to the list of punk sub-subgenres? How much more Weezer can the world take, especially now that Weezer itself has started releasing music again? Are they aware of this trend? Are they trying to cash in on the momentum and hype surrounding their music? And what will follow Weezercore's inevitable decline? Let's all pray the grunge revival stops here.
