SHAPE SHIFTERS KNUCKLE PUCK ARE BREAKING THE RULES OF POP-PUNK FOR SECOND ALBUM, ‘SHAPESHIFTER’.
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WORDS: STEVEN LOFTIN. PHOTO: NICK KARP.
here’s a lot of pressure on bands to get their second record right. Having had pretty much a lifetime to write their debut, they’re then fast chased by a ticking clock for the followup. For Knuckle Puck, they knew this was their chance to build upon the hard work they’d put in the last seven years - granted it’s only been two since their debut, but they aren’t ones to rush into anything. In fact, they’d pretty much sealed the deal on second record ‘Shapeshifter’, until they went out on tour with Mayday Parade and found that certain moments didn’t quite fit the bill. “We didn’t scrap what we recorded the
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first time, we just made it right, if that makes sense?” Frontman Nick Casasanto explains. “We just reached the conclusion that we weren’t totally happy with everything as a whole, so after the tour, we went back into the studio and just basically re-did anything that bothered us.” The fact that Knuckle Puck saw fit to put this much due care and attention into their second outing shows the devotion they have to the people who got them here in the first place. “At one point it felt like what we had would let our fans down,” Nick continues. “You know, the last thing that we were going to do is put something out that we weren’t happy with. “When it comes to our band, our ears are better than most in the sense that if we don’t like what we’re hearing, how could
the fans like what they’re hearing? “We had a whole two-year album cycle with [debut record] ‘Copacetic’. We were writing all along the way and talking about how we wanted the next record to sound, but I think we got a little caught up deciding the specifics of where we’re going to record and that kind of stuff.” Learning these lessons gives this next chapter of Knuckle Puck a far broader confidence; a much-needed attribute considering how restrictive pop-punk can be. “I feel like pop-punk, more than any other, is a very rigid genre,” Nick considers. “It’s hard to step outside the box. With [album track] ‘Want Me Around’ especially, that song almost wasn’t even on the record because you listen and you’re like, ‘Is this a Knuckle Puck song?’