Courtesy Pure Noise Records
With two sold-out shows at Space Ballroom on May 20 and 21, and a new album on the way, Connecticut hardcore stalwarts With Honor might be entering a new era.
With Honor reconvened last fall for a pair of dates — a stop in Nashville, Tenn. en route to their set at Furnace Fest in Birmingham, Ala. — but its upcoming two-night stint in Hamden will be its first home-state gigs since they last reunited in 2013. Those shows could be a harbinger of more to come. For fans in the state, it has been a long wait.
“It’s been almost a decade since we’ve played Connecticut, which sounds insane,” said guitarist Jay Aust.
The five-piece — rounded out by Aust’s brother Jeff also on guitar, bassist Jack Caron, drummer John Ross and vocalist Todd Mackey — were most active between 2002 and 2006. In that brief four-year span, the band accomplished a lot, touring alongside some of the biggest names in the genre and releasing a handful of records, its last with seminal hardcore label Victory Records.
With Honor formed out of the dissolution of the Aust Brothers’ previous band Hamartia, which had seen the guitar players exploring more metallic territories. Inspired by European metal groups like At The Gates and Soilwork, they shared in a heavier, more technically complex approach to the music that hardcore had been moving in by the turn of the century. But as that band came to an end, the guitar players had a desire to return to a more traditional style, back to the music they had begun to discover in the mid-‘90s.
“My first show was ’95 or ’96. I saw the band Shelter at Toad’s Place,” Jeff recalled. He had gotten a mixtape from a friend at school and was immediately drawn in, sharing it with Jay. Bands like Earth Crisis, Snapcase and then-up-and-coming local heroes Hatebreed began entering their consciousness, setting them off to discover the underground scene.
Growing up in Farmington, though, the brothers had to seek it out. “There wasn’t really anybody else in the high school that knew of this kind of thing,” Jeff said. “So we were living a separate life than all the other kids because we’d be going to these shows on the weekends while everybody else would be going to parties and stuff.”
The hardcore scene they initially found offered a feeling of inclusion and camaraderie — something they felt was getting lost by the end of Hamartia.
“I think the music got separated from the message,” said Jay. “That’s kind of how I viewed it. So we wanted to return to some of our old school hardcore roots and try to bring the message around — the things that drew us to hardcore in the first place.”
The message was one that had run through hardcore since its humble beginnings: positive living and a sense of community. These were ideas that had been championed specifically by the late ‘80s youth crew brand of hardcore, which the guitarists found inspiration in.
“Optimistic positivity,” says Jeff. “When you listen to Youth of Today, you get something a little different than when you’re listening to some of the other metal bands. It was more relatable and it was about personal growth and self-growth and betterment.”
So in 2002 With Honor came together to explore these more traditional concepts and sounds.
“John, our drummer, was actually in Hamartia. He was the bass player at that point, at the very end of that band,” recalled Jay. “Jack was in a Connecticut band called In Pieces around that time, so we had played with them a bunch of times in our previous band. And then I believe Todd, our singer, was in some of the same circles, but he was in a band called Life in Your Way. I think we tried out a couple singers and then he came in and everything just clicked.”
So the band set off, recording its first demo with Adam Dutkiewicz of Killswitch Engage at Zing Studios in Westfield, Mass. and playing its first show at UCONN — one that was headlined by a puppet show.
“We always thought it was funny,” laughs Jay. “We opened for a puppet show. So yeah, we’ve run the gamut of lineups.”
That first show, though, was also the last for Jeff, at least for a while. Before finding Mackey, things didn’t seem like they would be full-time and the guitarist took a spot starting a new band with members of Midwest metalcore outfit 7 Angels 7 Plagues.
“It didn’t sound like [With Honor] was going to be too active,” he said. “My dream was to tour, so I got invited to move out to Wisconsin and start a band that became Misery Signals.”
In his absence With Honor brought in friend Greg Thomas to play guitar and embarked on a tour up and down the East Coast in December 2002. The jaunt was short, but two separate events made a particularly strong impact.
“I remember when we kind of got an inkling that things were maybe catching fire,” Jay said. “It was our first tour and we had no idea what to expect, and I just remember that we showed up in Daytona [Beach] and just the kids there started going crazy. They knew all the words to everything.”
The audience reaction was unexpected, especially since the band only had a demo available. The band also had a notable encounter with New York hardcore icon Roger Miret in North Carolina. After With Honor played with his group, Roger Miret and The Disasters, the impressed frontman offered the band a spot opening for his other legendary band, Agnostic Front, at CBGB for the last date of that band’s tour. With Honor, of course, accepted.
When the band members returned home, With Honor was in full motion. The band linked up with Connecticut-based label Stillborn Records — headed up by Jamey Jasta of Hatebreed — who reissued With Honor’s demo as an EP. The band members also began to put together what would become their first full-length album, to be released on the same label. Jeff had returned home and rejoined the band for the task.
“[Misery Signals] wasn’t with guys that I had known as long, so the connection wasn’t as strong,” Jeff said. “So when [With Honor] were going to take it more seriously, I said, ‘I gotta get back there.’”
By fall of 2003, the band’s members had quit their full-time jobs to devote their entire attention to With Honor. From that point forward, they were on the road constantly, taking on any opportunity whether they fit or not, touring alongside more melodic bands like Stretch Arm Strong and Embrace Today, as well as heavier bands like Shai Hulud and Hatebreed. They even landed a tour with As I Lay Dying, who were becoming staples of the MTV2 metal world.
“I think we just took a lot from Hatebreed, just in the fact of staying out on the road and just getting your name out there,” Jay said. “We pretty much said yes to everything.”
Around the same time, the band recorded its first album, Heart Means Everything, which came out in July 2004. Musically it carried on the sound of the band’s demo, but the metal elements also began to creep back in. The album took on a more aggressive approach and even included some guitar leads reminiscent of Hamartia.
“We were playing with bands that were a lot heavier sounding than us,” Jay said, “so I think maybe — subconsciously feeling out of place with the bills that we were getting put on — we kind of started moving into a little heavier direction.”
Throughout 2004 the band kept busy, staying on the road and releasing a split 7‑inch with fellow Connecticut band The Distance later that year. The musicians’ work ethic and growing audience put them on the radar of Victory Records, who released the band’s second full-length, This Is Our Revenge, in 2005. The album saw With Honor returning to its melodic roots, finding inspiration in bands like Shelter, Youth Of Today and Gorilla Biscuits.
“We circled back to, again, the positivity and the message we wanted to convey, but at the same time keeping the melodic elements that we started with,” Jay said. “We were just trying to make a record that we were all proud of.”
While the brothers recall This Is Our Revenge being met with some mixed reactions originally, it now appears to be a favorite among fans, and among the band as well.
“There is quite a drastic change of sound if you listen to the two albums back to back, so I think it caught a lot of people off guard,” Jeff said. “But now, in retrospect, everybody came around and it seems to be the favorite.”
At the height of the band’s career, though, things began to fall apart. The relentless touring was burning out the musicians, leading to the departure of Mackey following a U.K. tour in early 2006. The group pressed on with a new vocalist in place, completing a U.S. tour and heading to continental Europe for the first time, but ultimately decided to call it a day later that year.
With Honor have played a handful of reunion shows since their split, but these upcoming dates in May seem to represent something bigger. The band has taken the time spent preparing — longer than originally planned due to a Covid-19-related rescheduling — to also work on new material and bring With Honor into a new era.
“During the pandemic I think everybody was in low spirits, and I think we all kind of needed that outlet of writing and playing again,” Jeff said. “It gave us something else to focus on and it turned into, ‘What if we did a new record, too?’”
“I know we rescheduled [the shows] from last fall because things weren’t looking as good, and obviously things are really starting to look up, so we’re excited to finally play them,” Jay said. “There was definitely some uncertainty there, but at the same time I think we all kind of had a creative spark going during the pandemic. Musically, at least, we’re working on a lot of new stuff.”
So it is that With Honor has a new album in the works, which the band will be recording with old friend Greg Thomas at Silver Bullet Studios in Burlington, CT around the same time the shows happen. It’s too early to tell when it might be released, but the band members know for sure it’ll be with Pure Noise Records, who recently reissued Heart Means Everything. Is there a future for the band beyond that?
“It just depends on what we can pull off with everyone’s schedules and everything going on in the world,” Jay said. “But, yeah, we definitely want to do some more shows.”