ONE STEP CLOSER

In just five short years, One Step Closer have become a modern hardcore mainstay. One Step Closer formed in 2016 in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with Ryan Savitski and his bandmates – currently guitarist Grady Allen, drummer Tommy Norton, bassist Brian Talipan, and guitarist Ross Thompson – revering the unusually melancholic, forward-thinking youth crew hardcore acts of both the genre’s classic era and ones later into the mid-2000’s. The quintet soon dropped a raw demo, then made a splash with a self-titled EP in 2017 and gathered buzz amid regional touring. But it was 2019’s From Me to You that truly took the contemporary hardcore world by storm. The fiery EP countered existing trends in exchange for a more melodic sound, essentially completing the band’s progression from scrappy, growling youth crew act to a well-rounded, heartstring-tugging emotional hardcore powerhouse – an evolution not unlike that of their beloved genre ancestors, Turning Point. lt was the type of dramatic-yet-aggressive hardcore largely not heard in over a decade: musically heavy and well-recorded, but also poetic and progressive in feel and subject matter. The band were suddenly being tapped for every notable hardcore fest in the U.S., receiving the crowd reactions to warrant it, and finding themselves on tours supporting major acts like Have Heart, Turnstile, Knuckle Puck, and Defeater.

For Wilkes-Barre’s One Step Closer – the concept of home is complicated. “l’ve never feit so distant in my life,” vocalist Ryan Savitski screams on the lead single “Pringle Street,” a place in his hometown that binds the album’s lyrics to both a precise location and feeling of displacement. On their first ever full-length album and debut for Run For Cover This Place You Know, the band offers a modern coming-of-age story about growing up and grasping both the known and the unknown. This Place You Know grapples with the weight of themes like isolation, depression, and loss – all amplified by driving bass lines, emphatic guitar riffs and unwavering drumming performed by the band. From the first moments of album opener “I Feel So,” the stakes are made clear by the anchoring lyric ‘this place you know, sometimes it hides the truth and lets people go” – One Step Closer is attempting to resolve the unresolvable anguish of moving on from everything you once knew.