NOTE: I started writing this on my old heavy-music-themed blog, Stay Heavy, back in 2018. I abandoned it for reasons unknown, and today I was reminded of its existence. I sat down to tackle Volume 5 of my “Old-Ass Mix Tape” series, but I wasn’t feeling it, so I poked around a few folders marked “Drafts” in search of some “inspiration” when I happened upon this. I copied and pasted it here as I left it, and then I added an ending of sorts, and made a few slight revisions (more specifically, I fixed some links and cleaned up some questionable stylistic choices).

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Regular readers of this blog may be familiar with a few of the things that, in the words of the late Laura Palmer, really light my F-I-R-E when it comes to heavy music. Those things, in no particular order, are:

• Riffs – It doesn’t have to be metal to be heavy, but the heavier it is, the more I love it. Fat-bottomed riffs, you my rockin’ world go ’round.
• Unconventional vocals – This one isn’t as easy to define, but I know it when I hear it. Sean Killian of legendary Bay Area thrash metal band Vio-Lence is perhaps my most often cited example of a completely unique vocalist with a weirdo style that I just can’t goddamn get enough of.
• Emotion – I’m a sucker for a band (metal or otherwise) that isn’t afraid to wear its collective heart on its figurative sleeve. If showing emotion is metal enough for Ronnie James Dio (RIP), it’s metal enough for me.

Regular readers may also know that I’m a fan of punk rock and hardcore (especially 1990’s hardcore), and very careful readers may even know that I dipped my toes into the emo waters of the mid-to-late 1990’s. I don’t swing in the direction of the latter quite so much anymore, but sometimes nothing will soothe my restless brain or my jangled nerves quite like The Promise Ring.

All of this jibber-jabber leads me to the focus of today’s post: a melodic hardcore-ish/pop-punk-ish/emo-ish band called Boxer. They released a single full-length album 27 years ago and broke up one year later. Practically no one has ever heard of them, but they left an indelible mark on the heart and mind of this guy right here, and I’m here to talk about them.

Available information regarding the band is scant at best (they don’t even have a Wikipedia page), but here are the facts that I was able to cobble together via some internet research:

• Boxer formed in Boston in October 1995. The original line-up consisted of David Vicini on vocals, William Kerr on bass, Jeremy McDowell on guitar, and Chris Pennie on drums.
• McDowell and Pennie met while enrolled at the Berklee College of Music, and both of them dropped out of school in order to commit 100% to Boxer.
• Boxer were the first band signed to then-new punk label Vagrant Records, and their sole recorded output, 1998’s The Hurt Process, was the first full-length album released by Vagrant. According to an interview with Vicini, the band “wanted to sign to a punk label and not a hardcore label, because hardcore kids don’t seem to listen to punk rock, but punk rock kids’ll listen to hardcore.”
• Pennie soon began playing drums with The Dillinger Escape Plan, and left Boxer after the release of The Hurt Process. He was replaced by Nathan Shay, who previously played with emo legends The Get-Up Kids.
• The band also added a second guitarist (I was unable to find a name), went on tour, worked on some new songs, and had plans for a second album, but then everything seemingly went to shit for some reason.

I suppose you’re wondering about the album itself. If you’re familiar with the defunct New Jersey melodic hardcore band Lifetime (and you should be), you’re headed in the right direction, especially with regard to Vicini’s vocals. However, Boxer is very much its own animal.

The band is tight as hell, and they sound like they’ve been playing together for a lifetime (no pun intended).  The riffs are big and metallic, at times cascading over each other like there’s just not enough room for all of them in the song, or even in the world. The bass is  bouncy and urgent and will (seemingly) randomly explode above the bedlam like some sort of crazy-ass 1952 jazz trumpet solo. As for the drumming, I’m out of adjectives, but the drumming is fucking outstanding. Musically, this is very much what would happen if a hardcore band played punk rock songs.

But what about the vocals?

I’m gettin to it, settle down. Vicini’s vocals are borderline insane, and insanely inventive. To quote a blog entry I found on a site called Theme Park Experience “the wavering vocals sounded like frontman Dave Vicini was having a panic-fueled freakout”. That’s a pretty perfect way to describe it (although I would put it in the present tense, since they still sound like that).

Example: the song “By the Way…” finishes with Vicini stretching the word “crazy” out into no less than seven goddamn syllables. I’m not saying no one else has ever done that, but if they have, I’ve never heard it. Plus I don’t think anyone else has ever done that.

The lyrics are what got this band labelled as “emo”, back when they were still a band. Vicini’s heart is shamelessly splattered open on his sleeve for everyone to examine, and like many of the band’s contemporaries, that’s what initially drew me to them. Short tales of love both lost and found, sprinkled with some inspirational lines (personal inspiration, not the religious type) and a bit of wistful nostalgia.

My personal favorite song on the album is also the longest song on the album. “Georgia” manages to kind of fit three separate songs into its almost 4 minute runtime.

I’m a big fan of penultimate track “Do the Math”, as well.

Album opener “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is a heartfelt, uptempo breakup song that happens to be the perfect song to kick things off.

It leads directly into another favorite of mine, “Blame it On the Weather”. Parts of this one still feel like they were written specifically for me (“Sitting in my ditch of self-loathing, and of course my mind is roaming, thinking things are always worse than they appear to be, just because I’m sick of talking doesn’t mean I’m not happy…”).

Album closer “You and Me” finishes things off on an uplifting and defiant note (“I can’t be living my life for them, I’m living my life for me, and you can never see it coming and we won’t stop for anything”), and contains a chorus that’ll live in your head forever after one listen.

If you like loud, agressive music and melodic, agressive hollering, you can’t go wrong with any of the songs on one of the finest post-hardcore albums of the 1990’s, The Hurt Process by Boxer.
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That concludes the original section. Can you believe I waited seven years to give that thing an ending, and that‘s the best I could come up with?

Anyway, I can still clearly remember when I stopped listening to Boxer, circa autumn 2002. I was delivering pizza, cruising down Moffett Lane, and I was blasting my dubbed cassette that had The Hurt Process on one side and FYULABA by Canadian hardcore punk weirdos SNFU on the other. I was halfway through the song “Child Labor Laws”, and for some reason, I just wasn’t feeling it anymore. It was a weird feeling, and I didn’t like it, but I was in no position to argue. I hit eject, popped in Side A of my AVAIL double-feature (Over the James b/w One Wrench), and started hollerin along with “Scuffle Town”. Before the Big Move to Austin, Texas in May 2003, I sold a bunch of CDs and books and whatnot, and The Hurt Process was one of those CDs.

Fast-forward to 2017. I’m sitting in the old townhouse on Adams, reading something or other, and out of nowhere the line “sometimes I catch your scent in the breeze, but it’s a little bit salty” popped in my head. I knew it was from Boxer, but that’s all I could remember. After finally figuring out the proper way to search (“boxer band hurt process”), I was able to discern that the line came from the song “Shorepoints”, which is every bit as perfectly suited for the Side Two, Track One slot as “We Don’t Like Them Girls” is for the Side One, Track One slot. If only the album had been released on vinyl or cassette.

I went to the local Half Price Books Outlet a few days later, and there was a copy on CD for the low, low price of 2 American dollars. I snatched it up quick, and I haven’t looked back. I picked up right where I left off in 2002, listening to the album several times in a row, and doing that several times a year. Some of the lyrics come off a bit angsty and childish to my 47-year-old ears, but the sincerity of them makes them feel timeless.

That’s all I’ve got for today. You should listen to The Hurt Process. It just might make you feel young again. Thanks for reading.