Ben Quad

The story of BEN QUAD is punctuated by moments of randomness: a chance meeting via Craigslist bonding over bands like Microwave and Modern Baseball. An out-of-nowhere name drop from indie tastemaker Ian Cohen lauding their debut album, 2022’s I’m Scared That’s All There Is. A one-off sonic curveball that somehow turned into their biggest song – and, without them realizing it at the time, a brand-new freedom to reinvent themselves.

But serendipity has done more than bring Ben Quad here, to the release of WISHER, their first LP for Pure Noise Records: It’s taught them to thrive inside the unpredictable, to harness a no-limits musical mentality and self-effacing sense of humor and turn it into some of the most resonant, captivating emo of today. Well, actually, post-emo.

“This is our love letter to the genre,” singer/guitarist Sam Wegrzynski says of the album. “It’s an amalgamation of all the shit emo kids like: screaming, synths, pop sensibilities all mixed with crazy emotional stuff. What’s post-emo if not the next evolution?”

The Oklahoma City-based quartet have always been evolving. I’m Scared That’s All There Is cemented them as a force in the modern emo movement, landing them on bills with the likes of Hot Mulligan and Knuckle Puck. The standalone single “You’re Part of It” added a harder, screamo-tinged edge to their sound, while an outpouring of support to a social media shitpost declaring “If ‘You're Part of It’ gets 10K streams by Wednesday, we'll put out a screamo EP” took them even further down that road with Ephemera, their 2024 EP. (The song currently boasts more than 4 million streams.) Now, with Wisher, the band deliver a true follow-up to their debut that fully embraces everything that’s followed it since.