Orange County, CA · metal · melodic hardcore

Stick To Your Guns

2 upcoming festivals ↓

Melodic hardcore with a conscience — sermons about solidarity delivered at full sprint, Orange County conviction two decades deep.

Jesse Barnett started Stick to Your Guns in Orange County in 2003, recruiting drummer Casey Lagos, whom he knew from the worship team at Saddleback Church, along with guitarists Justin Rutherford and Curtis Pleshe and bassist Noah Calvin. Their 2004 EP Compassion Without Compromise built a local following, and the band's debut album, For What It's Worth, featuring the song 'This Is More,' spread their name further while the members were still in high school.

After graduating, the band toured nationally and signed with Century Media Records in 2007, which reissued the debut with bonus tracks. Comes from the Heart followed in 2008, recorded with only Barnett and Lagos left in the lineup, and the band played that year's Warped Tour before Lagos departed while on tour with Every Time I Die.

Sumerian Records signed the band after founder Ash Avildsen saw them at the Anaheim House of Blues, and with a settled lineup of Barnett, drummer George Schmitz, guitarists Chris Rawson and Reid Haymond, and bassist Andrew Rose, they released The Hope Division in 2010 to wider recognition. That year they headlined a memorial show for Arizona fan Samuel Perkins, whose friends had tattooed the album's heart artwork in his honor.

A 2011 single, 'Bringing You Down (A New World Overthrow),' supported the Occupy Wall Street movement and fed into 2012's Diamond, recorded with new guitarist Josh James; the album topped Billboard's Heatseekers chart. Jesse Barnett still fronts the band, whose sets remain built around audience participation and spoken introductions, and whose lyrics keep circling solidarity, class and personal responsibility.

Read more

metalmelodic hardcore