Give a band a second album and they’ll build you a city.

For their sophomore effort, and their first with new label Fearless Records, post-hardcore outfit A Skylit Drive have crafted a sweeping, innovative narrative with Adelphia. Born from the mind of guitarist Joey Wilson, this fictional, frozen metropolis was created to push the notions of what the band could achieve, and to reach a new level with their storytelling.

“We wanted Adelphia to represent and display the band’s growth and love for writing the best music we can,” said lead vocalist Michael “Jag” Jagmin of the multiple accounts within the album, out June 9th. “The songs are a collaboration of stories telling of the happenings within the boundaries of Adelphia. It's all different ways of explaining how wrong the city and its ways are, and how these two people are doing everything in their power to escape. All the songs are rooted back to what it would be like to defy everything and get away from it all.”

For these experimentalists from Lodi, California, Adelphia is a step in a challenging and dramatic direction. “It will tell everyone that we aren’t afraid to push any boundary,” Jagmin said. “We are willing to try anything no matter how out of the box it may be.”

A Skylit Drive’s first effort, Wires and The Concept of Breathing, landed them at a #9 debut on the Heatseekers chart, and has sold over 30,000 copies. The group is no stranger to online success as well, garnering over 18 million plays and staying in the MySpace Top 100 charts for over a year. Not a band to ever be satisfied or slow down, they also unleashed a live DVD in December 2008 titled Let Go Of The Wires, which featured five previously unreleased music videos, interviews and was a chance to display their incendiary stage antics.

The loaded concept of Adelphia made its construction even more concentrated, requiring all members to stretch their ideas and talents in directions unexplored. Recorded over a month in Seattle with producer Casey Bates (Chiodos, Portugal. The Man), the band’s comfort with Bates heightened the free-thinking disposition of the album.

Wilson and fellow guitarist Nick Miller provided much of the groundwork for the record, bringing in frenetic riffs that the band would grow upon and fashion into the intricate sonic explosions riddled through Adelphia. Jagmin’s high-octave vocals and exploratory lyrics, along with Cory La Quay and Brian White’s intermittent and propulsive howls, complete the feel of the disparate environment the band envisioned, as well as the extreme lengths to which they wanted to take it. “Everything was gone over with a fine-tooth comb,” Jagmin said. “If a part is going to be poppy and catchy we will make it so poppy it hurts when you try to get it out of your head. If a part is going to be heavy and brutal we're going to melt faces off.”

As a band that will be highly visible on the scene throughout the summer, it’s only fitting that A Skylit Drive was touted as one of the “100 Bands You Need To Know In 2009” in Alternative Press’ annual issue. Bolstered by a second straight co-headlining spot on the Artery Foundation spring tour (which has been consistently selling out nearly every date since opening night), the band will delve into the long, sticky days that encapsulate the juggernaut that is Warped Tour on the heels of Adelphia’s release. After sharing stages with musical contemporaries Chiodos, Silverstein, August Burns Red, Escape The Fate and Alesana in the past, these forthcoming jaunts will aid A Skylit Drive in broadening their audiences and roads traveled.

“We want to play as many shows to as many kids as possible in ‘09. This album is ‘the one’ for us, and we're willing to work to the bone to make sure the world hears it,” the band enthused collectively. “We put all of ourselves into this band, and the record will say A Skylit Drive is here to leave a mark that will never heal.”
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