Hate The Game.

Could Hate Your Friends Be The Sign Of More Decent Local Pop-Punk To Come?

Pop-punk as a genre, as slighted as it has become, was pretty inescapable in the late '90s. As cheesy as some of it no doubt was, though, does it still necessarily deserve to be so looked down upon? After all, what grunge did to hair metal, didn't pop-punk, in turn, do to grunge?

Before the nostalgia that set in after the 20-year anniversaries of seminal grunge albums like Nirvana's Nevermind and Pearl Jam's Ten, the genre certainly wasn't thought of as the epitome of cool. We're still a few years away from Dookie's 20th anniversary, but there might be a few hints of an early groundswell of affinity back towards the pop-punk genre.

One such sign locally is the debut effort by Hate Your Friends, a pop-punk quartet comprised of Christian Medrano (formerly of Arlington avant-emo outfit Star Commander), Avery Taylor (of Empty Dots), Matt Jones (of Empty Dots, as well as Euless pop-punkers Those Damn Kids) and Fort Worth's Stevie Hayden (who performs folk singer-songwriter tunes as St. Evie).

Last month, the newly-formed quartet released a batch of tracks called Keep Me At Home as a name-your-price album on their Bandcamp page, which were recorded by the ever present Michael Briggs who runs the Denton label Gutterth Records, as well as the popular website Violitionist Sessions.

While you keep an eye out for live dates — we're sure the interesting male/female vocal thing they've got going on sounds even more compelling in person — feel free to stream and/or download the tracks below.