Every Time I Die members have to share their ETIDD plaque throughout the year...

If you've been living under a rock for the past month, you may not have know that hardcore punk icons Every Time I Die have been powering away through the heavy music industry for over twenty years and during that time, expressing their love and passion for their hometown of Buffalo, New York. Well, incredibly for them, it's all finally paid off (unintentionally) when the town decided to name a day after them.

No, Seriously!

December 15th is now recognised as Every Time I Die Day (or ETIDD) which came into effect last year as the boys played their biggest show to date, selling 3,500 tickets to their annual Christmas Show which featured fans flying into Buffalo from all over the world.

In honour of the local heroes, the band also received a plaque which guitarist Andy Williams and bassist Stephen Micciche told us all about during their recent visit to Australian for UNIFY Gathering. Turns out, it has to be shared amongst the band with each member (still living in town) getting to hold onto it for a few months according to Williams:

"He (Stephen) has it right now. He gets it for the first three months, so in the 12 months the four of us get it"

But as it turns out, in case of an emergency, they've got a backup: "They gave us one free copy, we'll probably have to pay for four other ones." added Stephen. If you're wondering why that bit of Shinfo was necessary for this article, Andy also informed us they weren't too careful when they won the last ever Vans Warped Tour Bowling Trophy, revealing:

"...we won the last warped tour bowling tournament and the fuckin trophy lasted about a week. So it's pretty good that Stephen has it so that it doesn't get broke because if it goes to me I'm gonna show everybody, I'm gonna fly with it [and] celebrate"

"We were doing ignorant stuff with it [the trophy], like we were going to swimming pools with it. We were really celebrating that victory" - Stephen Micciche 

Receiving such an incredible honour and recognition for your efforts, especially in a heavy AF, non-mainstream band is quite the achievement considering that fellow Buffalo act, the Goo Goo Dolls, don't have their own day, and look how popular they are...oops I mean were.

However, as Stephen tried explaining (but was lost for words with), it's something they didn't set out to achieve or change their ways for:

"The having your own day thing is cool. I mean we've been writing for our city for 20 years... Its cool to get some recognition [and] it's very nice to feel mentioned and a lot of people travel internationally and are there for the weekend doing stuff around town and they take notice. It was very cool to do something rad for Buffalo and bring all those people there and see a lot of cool stuff... But yeah, I don't know it's pretty cool"

 

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For those wondering what's happening with the band musically now, frontman Keith Buckley is off on The Damned Things duties, Andy has some Butcher Brothers wrestling competitions he's taking part in and ETID will be playing their 2003 album Hot Damn! in full during an upcoming tour overseas, but as for new music, don't expect anything anytime soon as they mentioned:

"We're gonna slowly start writing, I don't think we're gonna like get into a room and be like 'alright well let's do 15 songs' I think its gonna be like, here's three songs and nail those down and maybe take a month off and then next month 'hey let's try to get some more stuff nailed down' and then in 'oh, in May, let's go to Mexico and play a show'."

As for the Hot Damn! anniversary tour, the idea was never something they never thought they would, could or should do, but it's going to kill some time in between writing sessions:

"We're doing a show in the UK where we're playing Hot Damn! front to back, they asked us to do that and we were like 'well ok we haven't really ever done the 'here's the anniversary tour of a record front to back', we never really felt like we needed to do that, but yeah, we're getting opportunities to still play shows, year three of no new music..."

Either way, fans are still lapping up the band's last masterpiece Low Teens, and as long as they fit another headline (or anniversary) tour of Australia in there, I'm sure we'll be just fine.

Revisit the band's full interview in our Wall of Sound: Up Against The Wall UNIFY Podcast Special here. Then check out our review and gallery of ETID's performance right here

Words by Browny @brownypaul
Photo Gallery by Bree Vane

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVmlf6koQXA&w=853&h=480]