MySpace Bands - Where Are They Now? From First To Last
Once kings of the Emo Screamo scene, From First To Last revolutionized what it meant to be a MySpace band. With their skinny jeans, vibrant outlandish hairstyles before they became stereotypical emo haircuts and inserting sarcastic wit into their lyrics, FFTL used to rule the MySpace airwaves and were the talk of the early day social media site. “Note To Self” (I miss you terribly, this is what we call a tragedy) used to be on everyone's profile song and it was hard not to see them on your favorite raccoon bleach pattern scene girls top 8. But what has happened to them since those MySpace glory days?
2004's Dear Diary My Teen Angst Has A Body Count was everywhere at one point. The second single “Ride The Wings Of Pestilence” was widely circulated on Warped Tour sampler CDs and the band’s music videos saw heavy rotation on Fuse back when they still played music obsessively. Fast forward to 2007, Sonny bowed out of the band after their Ross Robinson-produced second album Heroine, which featured Limp Bizkit's Wes Borland on bass replacing Jon Weisberg (XO Stereo guitarist/bassist nowadays) after a bitter court battle over royalties with the band. Sonny Moore left in early 2007 after multiple vocal nodule surgeries to the point the band was kicked off tours by Atreyu. Moore's departure was met with a harsh negative reception from a very vocal margin of the fanbase who became toxic towards the band as if Sonny's departure wasn't of his own accord.
The remaining band members continued carrying on without Sonny onto a Capitol Records signing which soon fizzled not long after, due to the label’s financial issues. This event caused the band to release their self-titled album on Suretone in 2008 after enlisting Matt Manning on bass/backing screams and Chris Lent on keyboards.
“What about Sonny?” is a phrase often thrown at the band, despite bravely continuing to release three stellar, high caliber albums without Moore. The follow-up to their self titled, “Throne To The Wolves” on Rise Records, is a hugely underrated and slept-on masterpiece in the age of metalcore. However, it unfortunately didn't feature Travis Richter who was replaced with Blake Steiner. Travis was reportedly asked to depart from the band as the band felt a distance growing between them at the time.
Richter, a founding member who provided screams and guitars on every album before Throne found himself filling his time with The Color of Violence, his side project with FFTL drummer Derek Bloom in 2009 through Epitaph. Richter also had a brief but brilliant run as lead singer of The Human Abstract on their Digital Veil album and following tour in 2011. Unfortunately for FFTL, the release and tour for Throne To The Wolves would lead FFTL to their first foray into indefinite hiatus in 2010. The album under performed, only selling 4,000 records in its first week, despite critical acclaim probably not helping the cause. It’s a shame because in my opinion it's easily one of their strongest records back to front and this writer's personal favorite at times.
Matt Good would keep busy after hanging up the FFTL mantle, becoming the guitarist for the massively popular and successful supergroup Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows, which featured other scene greats like Craig Owens (Chiodos/Isles and Glaciers), Adam Russell (Story Of The Year), Nick Martin (Underminded, Sleeping With Sirens), and Aaron Stern (Matchbook Romance). D.R.U.G.S. seemed to come and go as quickly as it popped up, the band disbanding after Craig Owens rejoined Chiodos, leaving the remaining members no choice but to disband due to contractual obligations stating the project belonged to Craig and the remaining members could create no music together without Owens. Matt would persist on with an electronic project Kit Fysto which was plagued by threats of lawsuits since the project shared a name with a character from the Star Wars franchise. After selling all his guitars and forcing himself to learn from scratch how to become a producer, Matt Good has created quite a resume for himself creating multiple top-selling Billboard records for numerous bands from Black Flag to Asking Alexandria.
Derek Bloom has pretty much remained a private ghost, loving his personal space and spending time with his loved ones and reading. The quiet, reserved member appeared on Throne To The Wolves and wouldn't be featured on another FFTL track for nearly eight years. His Twitter page is humorous as all hell though.
But what about Sonny though? It would be foolish to assume that Skrillex isn't a household name in the year 2020. After a brief stint as a solo musician under the moniker Sonny, Moore released the Gypsyhook EP and promised but never released his debut studio solo album Bells after Skrillex took off and nobody recognized Moore en masse as the vocalist of FFTL. He became the man who changed the game for dubstep and popularized it to new heights. If you ask the casual musical listener to name a dubstep artist, if it isn't Deadmau5, it will more than likely be Skrillex. Strange how the once 5'4" frontman of a screamo post hardcore band became one of the largest, most sought out dubstep/EDM producers in the world, out-ranking long time DJ Tiesto in a short span, appearing in Disney movies and creating theme songs for the huge blockbuster video game Kingdom Hearts 3. Strange how someone could go from being unable to perform with FFTL due to multiple vocal surgeries to turning an AOL AIM screen name into a household name and becoming a 8-time Grammy award winning superstar.
From First To Last would spend a long portion of the early 2010s in hiatus when suddenly, 2013 saw the band explode back with the huge announcement of reuniting with Periphery frontman Spencer Sotelo on vocals to create a fresh new EP. The band eventually had a change of plans, promising a full-length record instead albeit without Derek Bloom whose schedule couldn't match up with recording. To fill the void, the band enlisted drummer Ernie Slenkovich and third guitarist Taylor Larson to round up the lineup for the 2015 Dead Trees release.
In mid 2016 on Beats 1, Sonny Moore played an oddly reminiscent vibe when he played a song that got the world of social media buzzing that the singer would be returning to From First To Last after a nine-year absence. With Spencer announcing his departure soon after, it only threw fuel on the fire. In January of the following year, the band released "Make War" which saw the long desired return of Sonny Moore to the fold and a guest spot from Blink 182's Travis Barker on the drums. Derek Bloom's return was announced soon after, bringing together four out of the five members of the Dear Diary era. It’s possible the strained relationship with Jon Weisberg was never capable of being salvaged. Or perhaps, the band never wanted to replace Matt Manning, who played one Los Angeles Emo Nite set with the band, Maybe they wanted to be like Green Day with a bass player playing off stage. Who knows to be honest.
The band would play two one-off shows and made their presence known very sporadically and with very little notice, creating pandemonium whenever there was a last minute announcement of them performing. The band wouldn't release another single until "Surrender" in the middle of 2018 and then, poof. There hasn't been anything heard on the new music front, despite promises of a new fully completed album, which Matt Good claimed on a recent the Sappenin’ Podcast with Sean Smith that it was nothing more than a trolling rumor. According to Good, they had the two singles and few unreleased fleshed-out tracks that aren't complete. Matt would go on to say his favorite thing to do is tease fans on social media about a record being complete to keep the mystery.
From First To Last’s Spotify bio
The band has kept their trolling on, completely editing their Spotify to include outrageous claims like Derek Bloom being a writer on Letterkenny (I checked, he isn't) and making their band picture an image of He-Man villain Skeletor. What does it all mean though? Is it just the band dicking around while Sonny Moore is too busy being Skrillex or are they taunting and teasing us like they used to on Dear Diary's challenging, witty lyrics as some sort of grand promotional scheme. As much as I want to believe that, unfortunately I think we just have to take the band at their word. Based on their release schedules for the last two songs, 2020 would fit into the status quo for what's been happening.
Nowadays with Matt Good producing everyone from Veil Of Maya, Hollywood Undead, Attila, and Sleeping With Sirens, the dude has conducted a massively impressive body of work in a short time, with Billboard success to back up his chops. Travis Richter and Derek Bloom recently released a new EP under The Color Of Violence, Cholera Violins, which saw a huge departure for fans of their 2009 release Youthanize. Lately though Travis has been teasing a new project If I Die First which includes huge names like Zubin, Lil Lotus, Nedarb and Ghostmane's bassist Rake, which promises to release a six song EP in June.
What do you think though? Do you want more FFTL or are you just content enjoying their back catalog? In a world where My Chemical Romance can reunite to tour, why can't From First To Last? We may never know, but with the star power Skrillex carries and the languish rock music has experienced in recent years, his presence could be a massive boost to reinvent the scene and expand to a wider audience. With that kind of responsibility, you'd think Sonny would want to further pay back the scene that helped put his foot in the doors he's kicked down. Having grown up through most of their tenure and experiencing first-hand their many incarnations and enjoying literally everything they've done from “Failure By Designer Jeans” to their cover of “Chelsea Hotel,” I guess all I can say is I just wish I had more. I wish more FFTL music existed.
Travis kindly reached out to the writer of this article and wished to elaborate on his role in Throne In The Wolves stating "I did tho [sic] help Matt glue throne together .. I was a part of the album and demoed most of the songs with Matt .. I was in the studio while it was being recorded / it was pretty standard that Matt recorded the guitar parts anyways (I only recorded guitar for the whole album of heroine / right channel!)" and further elaborated his departure adding "and they were doing less screaming (at least for me😜)" which would explain his venture into The Human Abstract with a much heavier, more scream-oriented sound. Travis also operates the 1720 Warehouse, a venue in the heart of the Los Angeles area, whose interior looks like something out of the future of what music venues should look like. It's an excellently run establishment that's worth looking into if you're ever in the area when shows resume. Also, Travis claims he was in a Mini Cooper commercial but I couldn't find anything. Is he trolling me?