Deviates were called “the future of punk rock” when they operated in Southern California in the late ’90s/early 2000s and continued to expand their reach after consecutive summers on the Warped Tour and the success of Time is the Distance, their second album. Sadly, they ceased to be a band less than a year later.
Lead singer Brian Barbara explains that touring had a lot to do with the breakup:
“At the time, it seemed like being a part of the future of punk rock required devotion to being in a touring band for life, which wasn’t really what I think we had intended or what we thought it was gonna be. When we started the band in 1994, we didn’t think that it would be anything. We were just kids playing the music we listened to, and punk rock was the soundtrack to our lives. By the time it evolved and grew to where we were putting out records, life had changed and we were ready to lay it down, and we didn’t know if that would be forever or when we’d pick it back up again.”
In 2021, Deviates picked up their instruments again and have readied and released their new album, the third in their chronology. Holding Out is a seven-song address to SoCal Punk Rock traditions, incorporating the new and the old. It contains a combination of recently written tunes alongside tracks created in the early 2000s for Deviates’ original attempt at a third album.
New single, “The Liar” has recently been released with a video, following on the heels album tracks “Wasted” and “40 Days and 40 Nights”.
The band have also headed right into live shows alongside Pennywise and Dead Kennedys, and will be headlining at The Troubadour in December 2021.
Barbara adds:
“Twenty years later, you think you’ll never do it again, but I honestly never stopped writing and never stopped documenting music — and it always ended up going back to punk rock. I was 16 when we started this and I’m 42 now, but there’s always been this common thread for Deviates, which is that we’ve always been representative of the crowd that we play in front of. Twenty years later the heart behind this hasn’t changed.”
