100 Bands in 100 Days Presented by Verity Credit Union — Day 74: Second Player Score

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Music fans of the Pacific Northwest, hello and welcome back to our third annual year-end daily countdown, 100 Bands in 100 Days, where every day until December 31st, we’re showcasing a new band or artist you have to know about, presented by Verity Credit Union. Follow the #100Bands100Days hashtag on Twitter to stay on top of all the bands featured and make sure to follow Verity on Twitter as well. Some days the featured act could be an established and locally-adored northwest-based musician that perhaps you haven’t been turned onto yet, and other times they could be a band with a small following that just hasn’t had their deserved time in the sun yet. Either way, we’re fairly confident you can come away from this daily segment with plenty of new favorites. Today’s musical offering is a band called Second Player Score that hails from Vancouver, WA.  

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Today’s band is a hardworking group of Vancouver rockers named Second Player Score that is busy carving out their musical path playing an energetic brand of pop punk. The melodic vocals mix well with the driving guitars on most of their songs but the guitar work gives them perhaps a harder edge and a bit more of a rock feel than others in the genre. A great example is the song “Hooked” where the band displays they can take on a Santana-esque persona with Brian Tashima showing off his guitar chops but never completely stealing the show.

From the bands bio:

Following a show that Second Player Score played at a downtown Portland club in late 2015, one of the other acts on the bill—possibly influenced by “Chosen One,” a song off of SPS’s debut album, Fortress Storm Attack—affectionately characterized the band’s sound as “nerdcore.” Would that be an accurate description?

“It could be,” Brian Tashima, guitarist/vocalist, says with a chuckle. “But besides the fact that we’re a rock band and nerdcore is already a hip-hop subgenre, I think it’s more a description of who we are as people and where our overall inspiration comes from as opposed to having songs— besides “Chosen One,” of course—that contain specific references to pop culture.”

Indeed, most of the material on Fortress Storm Attack and the band’s newly-released sophomore album, Nobody’s Hero, does not so much reflect a direct relationship to the topics adored by Comic-Con attendees (of which the band members proudly count themselves as being among) as they do a certain vibe and sensibility that can only come from people who have been steeped in that particular scene since childhood.

For example, while it never explicitly says so, the cover art of Fortress Storm Attack is a direct tribute to the “All your base are belong to us” Internet meme that grew out the 1989 video game Zero Wing. And now, with Nobody’s Hero, the band returns with a quasi-concept album that tells the Dungeons & Dragons-esque story of a man, granted magical powers by an evil spirit, who ends up destroying the world.

“Basically, this guy gets seduced by a female demon who gives him these special abilities, and initially, he tries to help people with them, but then he eventually succumbs to the temptation of using them for selfish and corrupt purposes,” Tashima explains. “Having done that, he becomes worthy of being her consort and siring her child—a daughter who will grow up to continue the cycle. The demon then betrays and abandons him, leaving him for dead. He survives, though, and uses what’s left of his powers to stop her in the only way possible, which is to cause an apocalypse that wipes everyone out, including them. It’s like a Greek tragedy.”

Sounds fun. How did the band come up with such a story?

“It actually sort of wrote itself,” drummer/vocalist Kyle Gilbert says. “We didn’t set out to make a concept album, but as we were developing the songs, the story just appeared. That’s how we tend to do things, for the most part—we don’t plan it, we just go with the flow and take things as they come to us, whatever happens naturally, whatever feels right.”

“We try to plan, but that usually never works out,” bassist/vocalist Daniel Downs adds with a laugh.
The eleven songs on Nobody’s Hero reflect a darker, heavier sound that still manages to retain the anthemic hooks and vocal harmonies that have become the band’s signature. From the crunching riffs and beer bottle-slide solos of the opening track, “Bonestorm,” to the ska-like verses that give way to an epic instrumental finish in the closer, “Comets,” this album showcases the growth of a band that counts not only artists like Bad Religion and Green Day among its influences, but all of geek culture itself.

If you are looking for an upbeat northwest band with a big upside, give this power trio a listen.

(You can check Second Player Score on Facebook and you can listen to them at Soundcloud and/or stream “Origin Story” below) 


Submissions for 100 Bands in 100 Days 2016 is now closed. If you’d like to see the whole list of bands we’ve featured, click HERE.

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