Despite their name, State Champs made four albums without a trophy on the cover. In 2024, that triumphant symbol finally appears, on album five, confidently named simply State Champs.
Billboard calls State Champs "modern-day pop-punk torchbearers," a reputation cemented by anthems like "Secrets," "Everybody but You," "Dead and Gone," "If I'm Lucky," and "Elevated." They've delivered their music and heartfelt message of passion and resilience on tour with Fall Out Boy, 5 Seconds Of Summer, blackbear, Simple Plan, A Day To Remember, and Boys Like Girls.
Classics from The Clash, Ramones, Foo Fighters, blink-182, and Paramore demonstrate the super significance of a self-titled album. Like Metallica, whose self-titled set is the biggest-selling album of the Soundscan era, State Champs waited till record number five to make the eponymous move.
Songs like "Silver Cloud," "Clueless," "Sobering," "Tight Grip," "I Still Want To," and "Golden Years" explode with high-energy, passionate, and smartly constructed precision. While big, bold, and slick, the production nevertheless sounds like a band in a room together or decimating the stage.
"We found our way, through the ups and downs within us, personally and as a band, and wanted to express that," explains frontman Derek DiScanio. "This is the right time to showcase it."
Bassist Ryan Scott Graham agrees. "When we stepped back and looked at the songs, sonically and thematically, it's a great vision of who we are. Every era of State Champs exists within this record."
State Champs surges with the energy of The Finer Things (2013), Around the World and Back (2015), and Living Proof (2018). It expands on the Kings of the New Age (2022) blueprint. That beloved post-pandemic album proved the band will survive. State Champs now sees them thrive.
Starting in bedrooms and basements in 2010, State Champs quickly ascended as leaders of a new scene owing as much to early Fall Out Boy and Green Day as latter-day Warped Tour bands.
Kerrang! gave the group's first album, The Finer Things, a rare 5K review. Aquarian declared them "one of the most high-energy, fresh, and respectable pop-punk bands of the decade." Rock Sound and Alternative Press served up adoring cover stories. Around the World and Back entered the Billboard Current Rock Albums chart at No. 3 and made Rock Sound's Top 10 Albums of 2015.
State Champs won Best Breakthrough Band at the Alternative Press Music Awards in 2016 and a trophy for Best Music Video at the following year's ceremony. Kerrang! doled out another 5K rating, too, this time for a sweaty, cathartic, triumphant headlining show in London, England.
The ambitious Living Proof followed. Riff Magazine celebrated the album's "magnetic empathy." The band made Living Proof in two chunks - the first with multiplatinum producer John Feldmann (blink-182, Good Charlotte) and the second with Kyle Black (New Found Glory, Set Your Goals, Boston Manor) and Mike Green (Paramore, A Day To Remember, All Time Low). "Choruses collide like a tsunami, ready and waiting for the arenas they should be headlining," raved Upset Magazine.
"Where I Belong," an epic collaboration between State Champs, Simple Plan, and We The Kings, arrived alongside a massive joint tour. In late 2019 and again in early 2020, they visited producer Seth Henderson (Real Friends, Knuckle Puck, The Devil Wears Prada) to make the Unplugged EP.
Henderson was there again for album four's early songwriting sessions. The ideas and song skeletons made with Henderson in Indiana came with the band to the studio, where Kings of the New Age was produced by Drew Fulk, aka WZRD BLD (Knocked Loose, Lil Peep, Disturbed).
Album four is often when a beloved rock band shifts gears, frustrating longtime fans searching for a more "mature" sound. But State Champs raised a joyous middle finger to that trope. As Kerrang! concluded: "On this evidence, State Champs are the rightful kinds of pop-punk's new age."
Naturally, nearly 15 years after the band's formation, guitarist Tyler Szalkowski, drummer Evan Ambrosio, DiScanio, and Graham found themselves at different points in their personal lives--marriage, kids, and relocations across the country mad for a new kind of relationship dynamic.
"I wanted to reconnect with my bandmates as friends and brothers," says Graham. "It's not like we were checked out or unexcited about doing the band. But in any group, the frustration, tension, and unspoken communication breakdowns can put you in a spot where you are holding resentments. I was like, 'Let's just go to the desert, write some songs, and reconnect.'"
The guys convened in Joshua Tree in California's Mojave Desert, a place with a musical history stretching back to the Indigenous Cahuillas, Serranos, and Chemehuevis, and associations with Gram Parsons, Donavon, Josh Homme, Nancy Wilson, and, of course, U2's The Joshua Tree.
When Boys Like Girls singer Martin Johnson heard the first four songs State Champs intended to release as an EP, he encouraged them to keep going and make a whole new album instead.
"Martin said something that really struck a chord with me," Graham reveals. "He asked us why we'd let noncreative people make the creative decisions for our band. People around us can have the best intentions, but it all starts with the songs. It is about cementing our legacy."
They returned to producer Anton Delost (Hawthorne Heights, The Warning, Mayday Parade), who worked on those first four songs with them and had collaborated on one of the Kings of the New Age tracks. Delost ended up producing and mixing the entire self-titled album. "We found a great balance between professionalism, friendship, and chemistry with Anton," DiScanio says.
"We went back to write eight more songs, and I think we ended up with 20-plus ideas to choose from," the singer adds. "We weren't rushing. It ended up being a record we are proud of thanks to a collective open-mindedness. 'Do you love this? What's something you'd love even more?'"
The band also invited a handful of major talents to collaborate on some songs. Among them were Courtney Ballard (5 Seconds Of Summer, All Time Low, Jessie J), Kevin "Thrash" Gruft (Blink-182, Jelly Roll, Gwen Stefani), and Curtis Peoples (Pierce The Veil, The Warning, Scene Queen). As DiScanio explains, Delost quarterbacked, ensuring it all maintained the Champs sonic stamp.
"Anton was like a fifth member on this album," Graham says. "He's so fun to collaborate with and the perfect mix of a producer and a friend. He was passionate about the songs, just like us."
Plenty of established rock bands veer into a poppier or perhaps a much "moodier" direction at a similar point. State Champs, while catchy as hell and boasting confessional vulnerability, proudly doubles down on the fast-paced, energetic, and youthful pop-punk power the band does best.
"Whatever is happening in our personal lives, or with the band in the industry, we know that we can lean on each other as soon as we get in a room together," DiScanio reasons. "In terms of the band's legacy, Kings of the New Age was a way to let everybody know we're still here."
On State Champs, they cement themselves as an outfit that can and will stand the test of time.
