Jim: I don't think it's a very academic way to described what we do, but it's tricky. Anything that gets bigger than the scene that created it, instantly is meaningless. We could get a room full of people together and ask them all what punk rock means and you'd get a room full of different answers.

I understand why people want to categorize things in neat little labels. Everyone wants to take credit for breaking the next big thing. Really only media asks me about [labels on] music--no person at a show is going to talk about it.

If I had to describe our music to someone who had never heard us before, I would say melodic guitar-based rock. I guess I can only speak for what it means to me.

When I was in high school and going to see bands play, emo was kind of synonymous with hardcore, but even that is kind of a where-you-grew thing. If you ask someone on Long Island what hardcore means, you're going to get a really different answer than if you ask someone who grew up in southern California.