The Ongoing Concept Returns With New Album, Original Lineup

Longtime Idaho metalcore band The Ongoing Concept is back in all its original lineup glory, and has released a new album, Again, to celebrate the reunion.

While lead singer/guitarist Dawson Scholz kept the group alive after his brothers Parker (drums) and Kyle (vocals) and original bassist TJ Nichols walked away at the end of 2015, the Ongoing Concept boys decided to return to their roots and get back together in 2021. Guitarist Andy Crateau, who joined the group in 2016, rounds out the current five-piece.

Time heals all wounds, and Scholz says playing music again with his brothers and longtime friend again only felt right. “We really didn’t talk for a while. We just all went separate ways — at least I did. When COVID hit, I started hanging out with my brothers a lot more, and that was when I brought up the idea of maybe doing music again,” he adds. “I assumed they wouldn’t be into it, but I think they'd forgotten how fun it was.”

The resurrected band started writing the song “Feel Again,” which took a little longer than usual, but it ultimately led to the the group's first record since 2017, Again, which is out now and chock-full of throughlines and Easter eggs that hark back to the Ongoing Concept’s previous releases.

“It was pretty natural, honestly. Being brothers, it’s kind of weird how you have this unspoken bond and this weird way of knowing what everyone’s thinking in the room,” Scholz says.

“It felt like what it felt like to write our first record [2013’s Saloon]. There were really no deadlines or anything to lose. If Solid State [the band’s record label] didn’t even want to do another record with us, we didn’t care," he continues. "We really didn’t care about anyone liking the record. We were writing music for fun, and it felt very real."

After so long in the game, music becomes a monetizable product more than anything. That’s just how the business works, but coming up with Again “felt very much like it did when we were kids — nineteen, eighteen years old,” according to Scholz, who prepared by listening to older material. Then he hatched an idea to pay homage to those early days via recurring lyrics and riffs.

“Again was really a concept of going back to our roots a little bit. We really wanted to make sure that when we came back, we didn’t just have a brand-new sound,” he explains, adding that the title seemed fitting since that word kept coming up once the writing process began. “It kind of became this huge fourth-wall-breaking concept, and we’re the Ongoing Concept, so all of our stuff has some behind-the-scenes stuff going on to break the fourth wall and do something beyond just the music.”

That’s not necessarily new, however. The last song on each of the band’s records bleeds into the first song of the next. For example, “Goodbye, So Long My Love,” the Saloon closer, continues on Handmade’s short opener, also titled “Handmade.” The last song of Again, “Falling Again,” is in line with the longstanding practice.

“My favorite conceptual Easter egg is the conclusion — or, I don’t know, maybe it’s not a conclusion, this last song of our record,” he teases.

The Ongoing Concept is also touring again. The band stops at Denver’s Rickhouse on Wednesday, June 28. Bloodlines, Lightworker, Saints of Never After, From Within the Trench and Oyarsa are also on the bill.

With experience comes maturity. While the lineup is the same as the group’s salad days, the Ongoing Concept’s approach to touring has changed over the years. “When you’re on the road, there are no rules. It’s the Wild West. You’re just scrambling and trying to scrape by to make any money. You’re always living on a prayer that your van doesn’t break down or get stolen,” Scholz explains, adding that the band has been lucky to avoid such vehicular hiccups and brushes with the law so far.

“Sometimes the older I get and more responsibilities that I have, I’m like, ‘How did we successfully do this when we were twenty and Parker was fifteen?’ We were just doing it," he continues. "Now you go to any city and you’re like, ‘This is sketchy.’”

The length of runs are shorter nowadays, too, making them more of a sprint than a marathon. “We don’t even get the chance to get into tour shape, because by the time the tour is over, we’re just starting to get just a bit in shape,” Scholz says. “I’d say it takes fourteen or fifteen days until you’re really at your prime, and we never do a tour longer than that.”

But having a DIY attitude helps, even if “it’s just different” compared to the band’s innocent 2009 beginnings, he adds.

“We’re cut with a little bit of a different grain…just living in that DIY sense,” Scholz says. “But we don’t stay in Walmart parking lots anymore. We get hotels now...I don’t know how we made it. It’s crazy.”

The Ongoing Concept, 8 p.m. Wednesday, June 28, The Rickhouse, 6100 East 39th Avenue. Tickets are $13.