No Bragging Rights: We Still Have More To Say

In March 2015, just a couple of months after a serious van accident, California’s NO BRAGGING RIGHTS announced that they were taking a break. A 2018 statement from the melodic hardcore crew later explained that the accident had put things into perspective, and that the band had started to feel like a “job”, while also leaving fans with some cause for hope in its characteristically defiant sign off of “We’re done when we say we’re done.” Turns out, they definitely weren’t done, with the four-piece now poised to make an emphatic return in the form of a self-titled EP, and their first record in seven years.

“We’d been talking for years,” explains the band’s vocalist and founder Mike Perez, who joins us just a couple of weeks ahead of the record’s release. “For me, I’ve always felt like I have stuff to say. I’m gonna always have stuff to say, so that’s why I never wanted to say ‘hey we’re breaking up’, because I just felt like if we could come back, why not!? It just took longer than we thought.” For many, all that matters is that they have come back, with the announcement of the new record met with rapturous excitement from fans old and new alike, as well as a host of bands who point to NBR as a source of influence. Perez describes the reception of the band’s return as “humbling”, adding “it was way more than any of us expected!”

Of course, the hardcore scene NO BRAGGING RIGHTS are emerging into in 2021 looks quite different from the one they left behind in 2015, but Perez isn’t particularly worried that they’ll stick out too sorely. “Coming back to it, it almost seems like a more accepting [scene]” he smiles. “Or at least I just feel like in general the world is more open and aware of mental health, and so in a way it’s easier for us to kind of pick up where we left off… I think we’re hopefully gonna fit in nicely and I feel like our message is probably not gonna be as out of left field as it was in 2012 to 2015 when we really started talking about it.”

In case there were any doubts then, it doesn’t seem as though NO BRAGGING RIGHTS have many plans to deviate from their original vision as a band. “I think the vision’s more or less the same,” confirms Perez. “A big motivation for me, why I stayed in the band for as long as I did, was I kind of felt like our message was helping. I felt like what we said on stage and our music was something positive, and I still feel like that’s us, even more so. I think the guys have really let me lean into the advocacy side of things and really go full steam into it.”

It’s this vision which drives Perez and co. to face up some tough topics on No Bragging Rights, as indeed they have on most of their records. From explorations of addiction and abuse, to the refusal to be broken or bent by mental illness on closer Unapologetic – “that’s probably the most personal for me” – the EP is a proudly defiant and unflinching record, but it doesn’t come without a cost. “I know it’s never intended this way but people will say things like ‘it must be fun to write like this, or about this’ and I’m like ‘no!’. I don’t wanna write about losing a friend of mine to suicide who told me that he didn’t wanna leave his daughter… I don’t wanna write about the horrible stories I’ve heard from everyone about being in abusive relationships, or being the abuser and having to live with themselves after.” 

“I feel like it takes a little bit of a toll on me,” he adds. “But I’m hoping that the songs will be helpful and not triggering, because I know that definitely can happen with some of these songs. I just hope that they’ll spark conversation, maybe provide some validation. I hope they’re more helpful than they are emotionally taxing.”

They certainly sound helpful to us, with Perez’s motivational lyrics matched by a chest-beating brand of melodic hardcore that takes the band’s sound to the perhaps cliched extremes of being some of their heaviest and most melodic material to date. “Sometimes I’d write stuff and be like ‘is this too much to share like this?’ and everybody was always supportive like ‘lean into it man, write what you feel,’” Perez explains. “So I think in the same way we told [guitarist and principal songwriter] Daniel [Garrow] ‘if this is a heavy part, lean into it, make it heavy!’ or ‘that part sounds super melodic, lean into it, make it melodic.’”

The process definitely seems to have paid off, with No Bragging Rights marking no less than a triumphant return for the band. It’s clear too that Perez feels a lightness in being back in this less high pressure form, with he and the band enjoying the relative freedom that comes without extensive touring commitments and overly detailed forward planning.  “We’re at a point where we’re not trying to make it, it’s more just like we have music and we still have more to say. We want to get it out… in the past we kind of had the door cracked open and if anything made sense maybe we could do it, but I think right now the door is open and we’re listening. If we can do something I think we’ll do it.”

No Bragging Rights is out now via Pure Noise Records.

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