Koyo couldn’t be more Long Island if they tried. The band is undeniably a product of Long Island melodic hardcore’s long, fruitful legacy—one that encompasses everyone from Silent Majority, who were 1990s proto-emo trailblazers, to Glassjaw, who fused the serrated chaos of hardcore with pockets of unexpected harmony, to bands like Brand New and Taking Back Sunday, who brought this sound to malls and stadiums across America in the early 2000s. From their very first release, Koyo has paid homage to this scene—the five-piece called its first EP “a love letter to Long Island music.” Now, on their second full-length album, Barely Here, Koyo carry the torch of their predecessors with energy to burn.
While there are traces of emo and pop-punk in the band’s DNA, Koyo proudly maintain their footing in the contemporary hardcore scene. To that end, they tapped Sammy Ciaramitaro, the endearingly uber-positive frontman of Santa Cruz thrash-core outfit Drain, to lend his inimitable snarl to one of Barely Here’s more propulsive tracks, “Saying vs. Meaning.” Yet when it comes to a solid pop hook, Koyo just can’t help themselves. Like emo legends Saves the Day or hometown heroes The Movielife, Koyo’s sound is disarmingly sincere, reflecting the heartache that often befalls kids from sleepy suburban towns where escape is the only dream that makes sense.
It’s an immediate, deeply earnest album; the members of Koyo seem to really believe in the power of this sound, and they want you to believe, too. Joey Chiaramonte’s impassioned vocals cut through the shimmering crunch of “Jet Stream Wish,” elevating what should sound like Hot Topic pastiche into a tight-sounding throwback anthem. The singles are clear highlights: the pit-ready “You Hate Me”; “Irreversible,” which recalls The Movielife with the spite dialed way up. The pummeling riff that powers “It Happens to the Best Of Us” sounds primed for either the KROQ Weenie Roast stage or an American Pie sequel trailer. In the wrong hands, those points of reference could land like an affectation, but instead, the band’s embrace of them feels genuine.
While these songs are indebted to millennial nostalgia, Barely Here’s recurring motif of perpetual exhaustion makes the record feel bracingly modern. Whereas aughts-era emo singers used to scream about revenge fantasies and broken hearts, Chiaramonte offsets his band’s buoyant sound with lyrics that channel a uniquely contemporary form of burnout (which, let’s face it, is a more relatable sentiment than wishing vengeance on your ex). “I’ve been treading out here the best I can,” Chiaramonte roars over Sal Argento’s lockstep drums on the colossal “What I’m Worth”; on “Selden Mansions,” Chiaramonte yearns for a safe passage home (“Those sidewalkless streets/They’re so priceless to me/Get me on Long Island now”) seemingly as a respite from the frenetic, overwhelming terror of modern life.
For all its strengths, Barely Here doesn’t show Koyo deviating from their established playbook. Koyo may never branch out from post-hardcore into a more experimental register in the way Glassjaw did. They may or may go on to conquer the mainstream à la New Jersey heroes My Chemical Romance. Instead, the record is a muscular, assured demonstration of the band’s strengths, and their commitment to the lineage they’re part of. With its barrage of thunderous breakdowns and unapologetic Stony Brook pride, Barely Here pays glorious homage to the halcyon days of Long Island hardcore; all the while, it reorients the genre’s hallmarks around the current moment. Somewhere out there, the Long Island godfathers are smiling.
