In 2011, many dope-ass events occurred. For instance, actor Ian McKellan announced that he would reprise his role of Gandalf in the “Hobbit” film adaptation. Also, who could forget Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” finally reaching #1 on the Billboard charts? Good times. One could argue that 2011 couldn’t have gotten any better, what with Colin Firth AND Natalie Portman hauling in Academy Awards for “The King’s Speech”, as well as the 60th NBA All-Star Game happening in the SAME year (West beat East 148 – 143).
Little did we know, in some garden-level apartment laboratory, tucked away amidst all the craft-breweries and churches of Northeast Minneapolis, a new level of standard pop-punk was a-brewin’. Ryan, Lupe and Parker, all busted-ass transplants from various cities in Midwest, America joined forces to write songs and hang out a bunch.. maybe make a movie and tour a little bit. And they did!
The trio created an eclectic sound of their own, combining the styles of punk, pop-punk, pop, punk-pop and poppy-punk into energetic bursts of sonic fury, usually clocking in at around a minute and a half per song. Since their inception in 2011, they released 2 LP’s (2012’s “Stay Busy” and 2015’s “Torpor”) and also a split 7″. I know we’re getting away from 2011, the greatest year of all time, but at some point, these three knuckleheads created a comedy/horror short-film called “Ghost Cop”. Look it up, I’m not fucking with you about this! Can I say “Fucking”? I can’t? FUCK!
In 2016, Braver recorded their new EP called “‘Old Rules'”, which is the last batch of songs with Parker on drums. They’ve has since joined forces with St.Paul bravermite Dani Barstad, who’s played in bands around the Twin Cities for years, including Decomposer and Mall’d to Death. It is said that Dani only eats raisons and believes he is the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard’s butler, Kingsley. With Dani now on board, Braver is back to full-on Braver-ing and have begun writing their next release and it’s apparently their best shit yet.
You can stream ‘Ram Nation Knows the Truth’ below: