Atlanta, GA · emo · alt-rock

Microwave

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Atlanta's grungiest emo export — quiet, bitter verses that detonate without warning, catharsis engineered with a slow fuse.

Microwave came together in 2012 in Woodstock, Georgia, near Atlanta, around singer and guitarist Nathan Hardy. The band's earliest releases were a quick run of EPs, Nowhere Feels Like Home, Swine Driver and When the Fever Breaks, all issued within their first year together.

The band's music sits between emo, post-hardcore and heavier alternative rock, built on dynamic swings: subdued, close-mic'd verses giving way to distorted, full-volume choruses. Hardy's lyrics frequently return to his Mormon upbringing, doubt and self-destruction, delivered with an unsettled, confessional edge.

Their albums include Stovall (2014), Much Love (2016), reissued in a limited run for its tenth anniversary in 2023, and Death Is a Warm Blanket (2019), which pushed further toward grunge and noise-rock textures than the more melodic pop-punk of their earlier work. Loudwire named it one of the year's fifty best rock albums.

Signed to Pure Noise Records, Microwave have toured steadily in the American emo and punk scene, supporting bands including the Wonder Years, letlive. and Jimmy Eat World. They are known live for the volume and abruptness of their shifts in dynamics.

In 2022 they released a split single with Drug Church that included a cover of Sublime's 'Santeria,' later collected on the compilation Dead Formats, Vol. 1. Their fourth full-length, Let's Start Degeneracy, followed in 2024 on Pure Noise Records.

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emoalt-rock