Even twenty years later, original drummer Cyrus Bolooki still can’t believe Catalyst, along with its hit single “All Downhill From Here,” blew up as big as it did. It happened during the height of MTV’s Total Request Live, a television program that allowed people to call in and rank their favorite music videos. New Found Glory fans voted “All Downhill From Here” onto TRL for fifty days straight, which was the maximum limit before the show “retired” it. Gamers will also remember Catalyst songs “This Disaster” and “At Least I’m Known for Something” from EA Sports' Madden NFL 2005 and EA's Burnout 3: Takedown video games, respectively.
For the record, the week Catalyst peaked, the only albums slotted higher were Usher’s Confessions and Method Man’s Tical O: The Prequel. In the top 25, New Found Glory landed above Modest Mouse, Guns N’ Roses, Kenny Chesney, Kanye West, Evanescence, Prince, OutKast and Lenny Kravitz, among others. For shits and giggles, Now 15 and the Shrek 2 soundtrack were also in the top fifteen at that time.
The early 2000s were a weird time for pop culture, and the rise of pop punk paired perfectly with that. New Found Glory’s 2002 album, Sticks and Stones, hit fourth on the Billboard 200, while its breakthrough single, “Hit or Miss,” from the 2000 self-titled record, was featured in the 2001 coming-of-age comedy American Pie 2 (it also appeared on The Benchwarmers soundtrack in 2006). Everything was coming up New Found Glory, whose members became kings of the Warped Tour circuit, back when headlining the annual emo gathering was no easy feat with such mega acts as Blink-182 and Green Day, both of which New Found Glory toured with, also dominating the scene.
“Everything was firing, and it seemed like [across] the entire world, the subgenre had blown up and everybody was loving what we were doing,” Bolooki says.
Now Bolooki, vocalist Jordan Pundik, bassist, Ian Grushka and guitarist Chad Gilbert — all original members — are looking back in celebration of Catalyst’s twentieth anniversary with a tour. The Mission Ballroom show on Wednesday, October 23, is the tour's final date, so expect New Found Glory at its best. Sincere Engineer is also on the bill.
“You guys will get the last show of the tour," Bolooki says, "so if you want to talk about a well-oiled machine, that’s going to be it right there."
If you haven’t listened to Catalyst since you got your braces off, it's not just another early-2000s pop-punk album. In fact, it’s not even as “pop punk” as you may remember. There is way more going on across the fourteen tracks, including fast-and-furious skate-punk (“Intro”) and more metallic moments (“At Least I’m Known for Something”). There are even some surprising New York City hardcore moments: Freddy Cricien of Madball provides backing vocals on “Your Biggest Mistake” and “At Least I'm Known for Something,” while H2O frontman Toby Morse guests on “Over the Head, Below the Knees.”
But then there’s the melodramatic “Who Am I,” with lyrics so sappy, you probably used them for a cryptic AIM away message.
It's called range, and New Found Glory went all out and showcased it on purpose.
"Well, when Sticks and Stones came out and we were doing that [2003] Honda Civic Tour, we were getting compared to bands like Good Charlotte and Simple Plan. We were angry with that,” Gilbert said at the time. “At that point, we were getting compared to more pop bands, and we aren't a pop band.” His penchant for heaviness given his past with metalcore heavy hitters Shai Hulud is a big reason for that.
Catalyst is also a commentary on the pop-punk scene as a whole back then, Bolooki explains.
“It’s very ironic that it was a record put out where, even artistically and lyrically, the whole thing is talking about how this subgenre was becoming very commercialized at that exact moment, yet we put out a record on a record label [Geffen and Drive-Thru] that was probably guilty of doing that, but they were willing to release a record talking about what’s going on in the industry,” he says, adding that the “most important thing we were doing at that time was trying to stay true to ourselves.
“That was our way of saying, ‘Look, we’re real. We see what’s happening here.’ We’re not a band that’s ever been super commercialized. We did what we wanted to do,” Bolooki concludes. “We make sure we enjoy it first, then we talk about the marketing and the other business aspects later.”
And it's worked, so who can really argue with that? In that sense, Catalyst is New Found Glory’s longstanding, catchy-as-hell mission statement.
New Found Glory, with Sincere Engineer, 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, October 23, Mission Ballroom, 4242 Wynkoop Street. Tickets are $50.
