• Band Tour Dates (Soundwave Festival)
  

Born out of a hearty hardcore pedigree, the members of Rival Schools stepped to the plate with a phenomenal history and the qualities that would point towards an amazing future.

Singer and guitarist Walter Schreifels began making waves as the guitarist for '80s hardcore pioneers Gorilla Biscuits and then went on to influence the entire post-hardcore movement with his influential work in Quicksand, as well as production for acts like CIV and Hot Water Music.

Drummer Sam Siegler has seen almost as much in his day, performing with an impressive list of bands that includes Gorilla Biscuits, Youth of Today, Judge, Shelter, CIV, and Glassjaw before finding his place in Rival Schools.

Guitarist Ian Love honed his chops in NY's Burn and Die 116, and bassist Cache "Utah Slim" Tolman is an alumni of exploratory jazz metalloids Iceburn, as well as a former bandmate of Siegler in CIV. With such an expansive amount of experience, it was only natural that these musicians would find their common bonds and create a new group that took their collective talents to even greater heights.

Coming together in the first year of the new century, the group quickly gained a reputation for powerful rock before they even started to record. Combing the live intensity of Quicksand with more exploratory guitars and a newly melodic singing approach from Schreifels, Rival Schools took the urgency of the new metal trend and gave it a solid heart and a thoughtful mind.

In an age when music was becoming dominated by completely unbelievable faux rock, the band disposed of clichés and focused on unbiased creativity. In an even more adventurous move, the group decided to make their first release something of a concept record and turned to Schreifels' own label, NY's Some Records, for the project

The resulting EP, Rival Schools United By Onelinedrawing, saw the band's initial excitement explode onto record with tracks like "Take One for the Team" and "Contraire," but the best was still to come. With allegiances to Island Records still existing from Schreifels' Quicksand days, the label scooped up the band's upcoming music, and summer 2001 saw the release of their first full-length LP, United By Fate. The record is a powerful document with adventurous songwriting, explosive energy, and melodically abrasive guitars, results that anyone who was paying attention should have been expecting all along.

On April 9, 2008 the German Rock am Ring & Rock im Park rock music festival announced that Rival Schools would be performingl on June 8, 2008. The band has also played the second stage of the Download Festival in Donington, UK on the same day Kiss headlined. In an unbelievable coup Soundwave has managed to score the services of Rival Schools for 09…this is too good to be true.