The Menzingers Announce 10 Year Anniversary tour Of ‘On the Impossible Past’

The Menzingers’ seminal 2012 album On the Impossible Past turns 10 this year. The Pennsylvania band is celebrating the anniversary with a fall 2022 US tour and bringing along Touché Amoré and Screaming Females as support.

Remarked Touché Amoré on the tour [via Facebook]: “11 Years ago we had the pleasure of touring with @themenzingers and loved them so much that we invented a game called “Who’s Your Favorite Zinger?” This game was started because we knew it was an impossible task to try and name your favorite member due to them being equally wonderful. We can’t wait to pick back up where we left off this November and get to know Screaming Females as well.”

The Menzingers released On the Impossible Past in February 2012 and were immediately embraced by the pop punk and post-hardcore scenes. The album received rave reviews and its legacy has only grown, standing alongside The Gaslight Anthem’s The 59 Sound as a benchmark of literary modern punk rock. In addition to the headline shows, the Menzigers will also perform at Chicago’s Riot Fest, where they will play On the Impossible Past in full.

Touché Amoré, meanwhile, put out the stellar album Lament in 2020, with the single “Reminders” landing at No. 1 on Heavy Consequence‘s list of the Top Metal & Hard Rock Songs of that year.

Since forming as teenagers in 2006, The Menzingers have shown their strength as rough-and-tumble storytellers, turning out songs equally rooted in frenetic energy and lifelike detail. On their new album Hello Exile, the Philadelphia-based punk band take their lyrical narrative to a whole new level and share their reflections on moments from the past and present: high-school hellraising, troubled relationships, aging and alcohol and political ennui. And while their songs often reveal certain painful truths, Hello Exile ultimately maintains the irrepressible spirit that’s always defined the band.

The sixth full-length from The Menzingers, Hello Exile arrives as the follow-up to After the Party: a 2017 release that landed on best-of-the-year lists from outlets like Clash and Noisey, with Stereogum praising its “almost unfairly well-written punk songs.” In creating the album, the band again joined forces with producer Will Yip (Mannequin Pussy, Quicksand), spending six weeks recording at Yip’s Conshohocken, PA-based Studio 4. “That’s the longest amount of time we’ve ever worked with Will,” notes Barnett. “We wanted to make sure these stories didn’t get lost in the music, so we kept it to a lot of room sounds with the guitar and bass and drums.”

Despite that subtler sonic approach, Hello Exile still rushes forward with a restless urgency—an element in full force on the album-opening “America (You’re Freaking Me Out).” With its pounding rhythms and furious guitar riffs, the viscerally charged track provides a much-needed release for all those feeling frenzied by the current political climate. “We’re living in a pretty insane time, where all you can think about every single day is ‘What the hell is going on with this country?’” says Barnett. “But as I was writing that song I realized that it’s kind of always freaked me out, especially coming-of-age during the Iraq War. I love so much about America, but I think you can’t deny that there are some people in power who are absolutely evil.”

Elsewhere on Hello Exile, The Menzingers turn their incisive songwriting to matters of love and romance, exploring the glories and failures of human connection. A wistful piece of jangle-pop, “Anna” paints a portrait of lovesick longing, complete with dreamy recollections of wine-drunk kitchen dancing. And on “Strangers Forever,” the band shifts gears for a searing tribute to parting ways, backing their spiky guitars with brilliantly barbed lyrics (e.g., “Maybe it’s for the better if we both stay strangers forever”).

An album fascinated with home and displacement and belonging (or the lack thereof), Hello Exile takes its title from its heavy-hearted centerpiece. With its aching vocals, graceful acoustic guitar work, and beautifully lilting melody, “Hello Exile” draws inspiration from Anton Chekhov’s “The Lady with the Dog” (a short story set in the Black Sea resort city of Yalta). “I grew up in a tiny town that’s essentially a cross between a summer-vacation spot for New Yorkers and a retirement home, so for most of my childhood there were always people coming in and out of my life,” says Barnett, who hails from Lake Ariel, PA. “Reading that story made me think of how isolating it felt when my friends would leave to go back to the city at the end of the season, and I’d still just be stuck way out there in the woods.”