UPDATE: A new album, No Closer to Heaven, is coming September 4!

If I need to explain why The Wonders Years make the top spot, you haven’t been paying attention. Although the band is roughly ten years old, they more or less burst onto the scene out of nowhere five years ago with the release of The Upsides and have done nothing but redefine what a pop punk band can do ever since.

In theory, The Wonder Years are as simple as can be; they turn the guitars loud and blast away a punk song with a catchy chorus. In practice, each consecutive release ups the ante and nearly dwarfs the album before it. The writing gets tighter and heavier, and the lyrics deeper and broken down to the essential parts of the human experience. Somehow, the concepts of each album relate to what has come before it, making their past discography more relevant as it helps build on each new song.

The Wonder Years are a story that is ever growing. Their last three albums have been retrospectively grouped as a trilogy about growing up. Each album has multiple call backs to the records before it, be it the characters, the locations or the melodies and lyrics. Where their new album goes is a difficult question to answer: since it sits outside of the trilogy we’ve known up ’till now it may be something completely new that we haven’t heard from the band before. But that’s nothing to be wary of; they’re constantly pushing themselves into new territory.

However, the spat of side projects from the various members (Aaron West and the Roaring Twenties, Why Bother?) over the last couple of years have let the band experiment in new territory that may or may not make its way to their core sound. Aaron West in particular was an exorcise in lyricism and storytelling that overshadows nearly everything else in its genre. From what I can tell, the band lives off of trying to top themselves with each release to make pop punk into a refined art form. Regardless, being TWY, all signs point to the album being loud, aggressive and catchy as all hell.

It’s going to be a big year. A new album is almost guaranteed, especially since The Greatest Generation was released almost two years ago and the band are already signed for another full run of this year’s Warped Tour. Maybe I give them too much credit, but the band has been at the forefront of the pop punk rebirth in the 2010’s without even flinching. Even if the album is a bomb, the band is an inspiration of hard work and ferocious integrity that anyone can and should look up to.

“It’s gonna be our year, boys”.

Kyle Schultz is the Senior Editor at It’s All Dead and has worked as a gaming journalist at Structure Gaming. He lives in Chicago and has seen Wonder Years almost every time they’ve been near the city for the last few years. He is an obsessive maniac who hasn’t been able to go a week without listening to one of their albums since The Upsides reinspired his love for music half a decade ago.