Modern Life Is War
My Love. My Way.

Jeffrey, John, Matt, Chris & Tyler are five guys from Marshalltown, Iowa. A state that epitomizes the rural Midwest, where you can travel on the road for miles and find yourself immersed in desolate lands, wheat fields, and modestly sized towns that seem abandoned to their sad fate.

It's the beginning of the 2000s, and they start making their first moves with a swift 7" EP of three tracks. Artwork that plays on a grayscale and the photograph of two hangman's nooses. Stark, essential, old school. They present themselves to the world as Modern Life Is War, an eloquent moniker that in the years to come will rightfully become a cult/seminal name in the hc scene. Indeed, because if lately we've been witnessing the renaissance of that lethal (and winning) mix of melody and uncontrollable rage, it is mainly due to them, who from pioneers became the symbol of that certain newly mentioned way of understanding hc in the new millennium. Thus, we arrive at the first fundamental stop: My Love. My Way.

2003, ten tracks (the reissue on Deathwish will include the tracks from the EP), scarcely 25 minutes to create the masterpiece. Frenzy dominates, the whole work is an explosive fuse that, once lit, cannot be stopped, just waiting for the moment of detonation. The leitmotiv will be a continuous alternation of granite, rocky moments that spill over into the blindest fury with increasingly sharpened distortions. However, the turning point comes when Modern Life Is War decides to take a break within these mainly reinforced hc punk structures. They slow down, the riffs aren't so tight, and they introduce a contagiously melodic component into their DNA that goes on to shape the continuation of every composition, whether it’s more reflective, cadenced, or explodes into dragging and killer rhythms. Only thrills of exaltation, thanks also to the precise interventions of bass and drums that on more than one occasion know how to claim the rightful spotlight they deserve. However, the driving force of the combo is Jeffrey Eaton; his raspy voice is a continuous punch in the stomach. A guy who continuously regurgitates every conceivable discontent of a confused generation, lost in a limbo that's hard to identify. A constant failure, human relationships that disappear, the anomie of a gray world, an unsustainable present shouted with the delicacy of a caterpillar demolishing the ruins of a building. But there is a solution, and the answer is found in "First & Ellen": my love. my way. [..] we overcome. we push ahead.

A band that won't crumble even a little, so much so that in 2005 they will return at very high levels, if not higher, with the magnificent "Witness" and will challenge themselves with a more refined and less immediate album like "Midnight In America" two years later. Three albums that definitively consecrate them, but it is precisely here that their story abruptly ends since in 2008 they decide to disband. Guys who love to play and nothing else, as they have always defined themselves in various interviews, with an attitude that is a rare commodity these days and consistent with their line of thought. "We are leaving soon, but the future is unwritten", a statement that leaves a faint hope that will only materialize in 2012 when rumors emerge that the original lineup (Chris and Matt were not in Midnight In America) has reformed and has written new tracks in John's basement. Deathwish officially announces it on April 1st with considerable irony, with the doubt of a well-orchestrated April Fool's joke, but confirmations arrive and Modern Life Is War will soon announce "Fever Hunting", the new album, for September 2013. It's definitive, the hunt that began with "My Love. My Way." reopens.