Solar Bear does it mid-’00s old-school

Post-hardcore has deep roots in Denver, and that’s good news for new local acts like Solar Bear. The bad news is that the glory days of bands like Vaux (not to mention Angel Hair and The VSS) are becoming increasingly distant memories. “It’s something we measure ourselves by, bands like Fear Before and stuff like that,” Solar Bear guitarist Marshall Gallagher says. “They seem like they’re almost on their way out, and we feel like we’re trying to carry the torch for the kind of music that bands like that play. It’s depressing to see all your favorite bands that you try to emulate falling off the face of the earth.”

Solar Bear - The Ghost Of Anton Lavey from Eric Paton on Vimeo.

Solar Bear’s new Captains Of Industry (which drops this Saturday at Moe’s Original Bar B Que) certainly busies itself with post-hardcore’s heyday. The album—which, not coincidentally, features cover art from former Fear Before drummer Brandon Proff—is full of guitars lashing around like elbows in an overcrowded mosh pit and rhythms all abuzz with caffeine-overdose palpitations. As the Denver band attempts to reinvigorate a style that’s lost ground to punk fans who’ve moved on to more accessible genres, it’s finding it to be an uphill battle in more ways than one—particularly as fans flee MySpace for new social-networking platforms.

The once bustling tool to promote music has become a wasteland of bands hyping themselves almost exclusively to other bands, Gallagher says, and the post-hardcore acts who relied so heavily on Internet buzz a few years ago are yet again looking for new ways to promote themselves. “Now, I feel like we have to actually buckle down and do a hell of a lot more physical work finding people,” he says. “We have to actually start going out and flyering the hell out of shows and handing out samplers and stuff, just like people used to do.”

Bet nobody was cheering for the return of those local band traditions.