SWMRS Tease New “Becker” Album, As Band Continues To Establish Their Identity

There’s few bands who imprinted on me as quickly as SWMRS, which has made their controversial and challenging last few years difficult.

SWMRS has been a very difficult band to be a fan of these last few years. I touched on this briefly in a comical post sometime last year about how all my favorite bands seemed to fall apart. And to be fair, I was kind of right, as Catfish and the Bottlemen just screwed over a ton of fans, myself included, by cancelling the US and Australia tours with zero reasoning. The real purpose of that article wasn’t to whine, but to instead point out that today’s music industry is tough to succeed in, even if you have some very successful albums or tours under your belt.

But back to SWMRS, who are teasing their fourth album “Becker”, behind some recent touring and new releases. The album is due October 11th, so very soon. The band had a bit of surprise return when they released the “Sonic Tonic” album in 2023. After going into hiatus behind former drummer Joey Armstrong’s abuse allegations, and the serious injuries sustained by co-frontman Max Becker, many of us assumed the band was essentially done. Which was tough, as their first two albums were magnificent and very dearly important to me during my early twenties.

“Sonic Tonic” Era

The band returned with Armstrong gone, replaced by longtime tour crew Jamie Stewart, as well as bassist Seb Mueller departing, and replaced by the third Becker brother Cade. Now, the trio of Max, Cade, and Cole Becker is teasing a fourth album, “Becker”, that will hopefully be an improvement on “Sonic Tonic”.

While there was nothing objectively wrong with the album, it felt very much like a softer, toned down version of the band. In many ways, I’m sure the album was highly therapeutic for Cole & Max, who were rebuilding themselves and their band. That’s a major positive, and my favorite track from the album “Le Surf”, perfectly captures the band’s healing efforts. But the energy, and Clash-like enthusiasm from the band was clearly drained, and I hope they can recapture it.

Early Signs Are Mixed

Early returns on the singles seem to suggest as much. As “DELONGESONG” was a ripping ode to Blink-182 and Tom Delonge’s love of all things aliens. It showed off the genre bending and heavy riffing from the first two SWMRS albums, which has me intrigued on what the next era of the band will look like. Overall, it was a promising song that made my playlist.

More recently, the band unveiled their next single “EMO KIDS”, and it’s fallen a little flat for me personally. It once agains packs a bit of the punch the band was known for. It’s interesting to see them call on different approaches and genres again, but it’s also strange to have a hip-hop influenced song about their love of emo? There’s definitely some punk themes going on, but man, it’s really missing an edge for me. It’s more lo-fi, summer sing along, but without the big chorus or hook. This is again, all my opinion, and I’m happy they are putting out music of any kind. But it appears more and more likely that the SWMRS of old may be behind us, which is a shame considering how young they are. This isn’t any older band mellowing out and experimenting, it’s a band that should have been riding a huge wave to wave the punk flag.