Post-hardcore supergroup Rival Schools (Quicksand, CIV, etc.) are celebrating their 25th anniversary this year with the upcoming release of a deluxe reissue of their 2011 sophomore album “Pedals“. New vinyl represses of their debut album, “United By Fate“, as well as their third full-length offering, “Found“, are also planned, with all three due out on September 20th through Run For Cover Records.
The deluxe edition of “Pedals” will feature a trio of b-sides and a live in-studio session recorded in Germany. The additional bonus material set to be included with that will run as follows:
11 – “You Should Have Hung Out” (b-side)
12 – “Arranged Marriages” (b-side)
13 – “Paranoid Detectives” (b-side)
14 – “Wring It Out” (St. Paulli Sessions)
15 – “69 Guns” (St. Paulli Sessions)
16 – “Small Doses” (St. Paulli Sessions)
17 – “The Ghost Is Out There” (St. Paulli Sessions)
The deluxe edition of “Pedals” and the new pressings of both “United By Fate” & “Found” are up for grabs at rivalschools.lnk.to/pedals. Rival Schools vocalist/guitarist Walter Schreifels commented:
“I love these records. We made ‘Pedals‘ ten years after ‘United By Fate‘, so it’s interesting to go back and revisit something—which I’ve done twice with Quicksand—and kind of pick up where you left off. I just really love the songs [on ‘Pedals‘]. I hadn’t listened to them in a long time and I just like, ‘What was I thinking? These songs are great.’”
Drummer Sammy Siegler added:
“For ‘Pedals‘, we recorded with this really talented engineer Joel Hamilton (Paul McCartney, Rick Rubin) and I think we were a little tight on budget and we went in one day and recorded 17 songs. Then we went to [guitarist] Ian Love’s studio and finished tracking them. We didn’t want to put all of the songs on the record and ‘You Should Have Hung Out’ was one of those songs for whatever reason we didn’t put on the album that we all really dig. To celebrate the reissue we’re making a video and giving this song a little extra love.”
“Found” largely consisted of tracks originally demoed for what was to become the band’s follow-up to “United By Fate“. However, a lengthy hiatus saw much of the material shelved when the group did eventually reconvene close to a decade later, with the band instead creating what became “Pedals“. As Schreifels put it:
“When we came back to ‘Pedals‘, we used a copy of the demos that eventually became ‘Found‘ like ‘Sofia Loren‘ and ‘Big Waves‘, so even though those versions are different, I think those records are linked.
We didn’t use a lot of amazing songs from ‘Found‘ on ‘Pedals‘ because we wanted to do something contemporary to where we were at the moment. So there’s all these songs on ‘Found‘ that are awesome, but we never re-recorded them and I really have to credit Sam with holding on to those songs and really pushing to have them pressed onto a record.
We really went for it on ‘United By Fate‘: We toured quite a bit and did all of the things a band should do on that record, but I would say that ‘Found‘ and ‘Pedals‘ are very underserved and the quality is there on those two albums.”
