The Menzingers

The Menzingers have spent close to two decades turning the ordinary business of growing up into some of the most quietly devastating punk rock anyone has written. They formed in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 2006, four teenagers who would eventually relocate to Philadelphia and grow into one of the most reliable bands in American guitar music. The lineup has held remarkably steady: Greg Barnett and Tom May trading vocals and guitars, Eric Keen on bass, Joe Godino on drums. That stability is part of the story. You can hear it in the way the band moves as a single muscle, and in the way their songs treat memory, regret, and stubborn hope as subjects worthy of full-throated singalongs.

Their early run took them from a self-titled demo through Go-Kart and Red Scare before they signed to Epitaph, the home that has carried them ever since. The 2012 album "On the Impossible Past" was the record that announced them as something special, and they have kept raising the stakes from there. "After the Party," released in 2017, remains a high-water mark, its title track wrestling with the question of what comes after your twenties end and the party finally winds down. It is the kind of chorus that an entire room shouts back, equal parts celebration and reckoning.

By the time of 2019's "Hello Exile," the band had widened its palette considerably, letting Americana, classic rock, and a little country bleed into the punk. "Anna," from that record, is a perfect example of their gift for the slow build, a character study that earns its swell. In 2023 they pushed even further on "Some of It Was True," recorded at Sonic Ranch in Texas with producer Brad Cook, and it landed as one of their most immediate and energetic statements yet.

Now they are at another threshold. "Everything I Ever Saw," their next full-length, arrives July 17 via Epitaph, recorded in Philadelphia in the fall of 2025 with Grammy-winning producer Will Yip at his Memory Music Studios. The lead single, "Chance Encounters," opens the album and opens it loud, a rush of adrenaline and singalong hooks with a video directed by Britain Weyant and the band. The tracklist also offers "Better Angels" and "Nobody's Heroes," titles that already feel of a piece with the band's long conversation about who we are versus who we mean to be. In a recent interview, Barnett framed the spirit of the record simply: it is never too late to be the person you want to be.

That sentiment is the through line of everything The Menzingers do. Their best songs are about the gap between intention and outcome, and they close that gap, at least for the length of a chorus, by making the whole thing sound like a victory. Start with "After the Party," let "Anna" pull you under, then meet them where they are right now with "Chance Encounters." Few bands have made the passage of time feel this alive.