Glassjaw "Don Fury Sessions"

There is a disparaging, and thankfully long-lost, letter that I penned to a friend who was trying to tip me off to the soon-to-be Long Island iconoclasts Glassjaw. In it, I summarily dismissed the post-hardcore band as another entry in a long list of major label interlopers like Jawbox and Shudder to Think. From post-hardcore career-men like Orange 9mm to the obscure likes of Into Another, if you brandished an SG at your hip, you were fair game and there was a check with an unexpected amount of zeros waiting for you. But that very small window of “anything goes” when majors were scrambling to get their mitts on their share of the turf kicked up with Nirvana and the Seattle grunge movement was closing.  In the wake of that, Glassjaw was collateral damage. I was convinced post-hardcore was a mainstream nonstarter. Despite the fact it was a subgenre I personally gravitated to because I signed pioneering acts like Jawbox, Samiam, and CIV to various major labels, I had my hopes dashed again