Story of the Year is back and ready to light the stage on fire with their new album A.R.S.O.N., the band’s eighth overall studio effort and its first since 2023’s Tear Me to Pieces. The band will celebrate the Friday release with an album release show at The Pageant on Saturday, February 14.
Singer Dan Marsala says Story of the Year was eager to keep momentum going after Tear Me to Pieces, and they soon got back in the studio with producer Colin Brittain, the current drummer for Linkin Park, writing and recording as time allowed. The album’s title comes from the lyric “here for the A.R.S.O.N.” in lead single “Gasoline (All Rage Still Only Numb),” which parenthetically spells out the title’s acronym. It was this “burn it all down” sentiment and feelings of disconnection that Marsala says became an overall theme for this batch of songs—which is why the band gravitated toward such an incendiary title.
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“[‘Gasoline’] is kind of angry, but it’s also cheeky in a fuck everything, I’m done with this sort of way,” Marsala says. “We decided to make an acronym for [A.R.S.O.N.] and figure out how to encompass the feeling of the whole record in it.”
While Marsala jokes that the music on the album was inspired by the “rock gods,” much of the material emerged while the band was in the studio. Copious riffs and demos from guitarist Ryan Phillips were used as jumping-off points, and outside writers offered new perspectives. Marsala notes that the approach more or less allowed the band to let the songs themselves dictate where things would go. This opened the band up to potential ideas, like when co-producer Dan Book offhandedly suggested the word “gasoline” in a chorus, unlocking the song and leading to what Marsala describes as “magic moments” in the studio.
“We used to toil about how a song had to be about a specific idea or go in a certain direction, but now I love those magic moments,” Marsala says. “I love being open to the ideas and letting it work out. Finding it in the moment instead of forcing it.”
Since their 2003 debut album, Page Avenue, which was certified platinum by the RIAA in 2021, Story of the Year has carved out a niche in the worlds of screamo and post-hardcore and has stood the test of time as one of St. Louis’ most successful rock bands of the Warped Tour era. The band has continued to find their audience, and watch it grow, as nostalgia for emo and pop-punk music of the ‘00s reigns in the modern day. Notably, Story of the Year has performed at three of the four years of the popular When We Were Young festival in Las Vegas, of which their manager is part owner. The festival highlights millennial favorites of a certain shared flavor, such as My Chemical Romance, Paramore, Blink-182, and Panic! At the Disco. This resurgence in popularity for emo and pop punk has opened up further opportunities and created crossover appeal—even if they might have bristled at the categorization in the band’s early years.
“Everything kinda falls under ‘emo’ these days, and we were pretty militantly against being classified as ‘emo’ at the time, but now I don’t give a shit at all about that,” Marsala says. “I love the unity of the scene and the way we can tour with Yellowcard a couple of years ago and then two months later we were on Knotfest with Slipknot and Megadeth. Somehow we just transform and fit in all of these different genres.”
Even so, Story of the Year isn’t content just playing the hits, and Marsala makes it clear they want to keep making music that connects with their fans.
“It’s cool for us to be active and still just as excited about making new music and get to resurge in this second time around for emo,” Marsala says. “We love to celebrate the past, but we don’t want to completely live in the past. We’re not focusing on being the old emo guys from 20 years ago. We want to keep kicking ass.”
With that in mind, Story of the Year is keeping this energy going as they start 2026 with this weekend’s album release show at The Pageant. They’ll be joined by two recently reunited groups, St. Louis pop-punk outfit Rushmore Academy and Southern California alt-rockers Letter Kills, who Marsala notes opened for Story of the Year at the Pageant in 2004 for the recording of their live DVD, Live in the Lou/Bassassins. Marsala also promises they’ll be adding plenty of new songs from A.R.S.O.N. into their repertoire alongside the fan favorites.
For a band whose members all still live here in St. Louis, it’s the perfect place for them to kick things off and share this new material they’re so proud of.
“We always try to do an album release show in St. Louis,” Marsala says. “That’s our tradition. That’s the way we want to release it to the world, to play in front of our hometown people and have a magical night to celebrate it.”
