Northbrook

Northbrook started out as a pipe dream between two cynical kids, William Doyle and Ryan Mentzos, who hated where they lived and used music as an escape from that cynicism. Seems typical enough for a band that would host a profile on absolutepunk, right? Oh wait, that's right, they lived in different countries. They wrote songs over an online telephone program called Skype, recorded their respective parts at home, and they would be subsequently mixed by one of the members. The internet is a beautiful thing.

But while that makes for a great story, unfortunately at the ages of 16 neither could round up the proper equipment to record past an acoustic setting. Having greater ambitions and beginning to develop creative differences, the two split off into their own respective projects. Ryan elected to pick Northbrook up where it left off, in an effort to persistently carry it to the same heights he'd hoped to accomplish whether it was with or without his longtime songwriting partner.

You know what, screw this third-person storytelling bullshit, it just makes me feel like a douchebag to talk about my band like that. Hi, my name is Ryan (or Randall if you prefer lame first names), and my band's name is Northbrook. I just finished an album called Maybe... after 3 years of work, and my music currently exists as sort of a revival of the pre-2005 pop-punk sound which inspired me to make music in the first place. I'd like to move on to bigger and better things in the future if I'm capable, but for the time being you can download the album and give me blunt feedback -- I would love nothing more than to hear, not just what's good or redeeming about the music (if there's even anything at all), but EXACTLY what was going through your mind as you were listening. Don't hold back on the negatives, they only inspire me to improve my writing.

I feel I should mention Steve Miskolczi was the drummer on my record and i could not have accomplished it without a year of collaboration with him.

old fall out boy, old taking back sunday, old brand new, the graduate, the early november