O'Neal calls Denver's current scene a "boiling pot" of creativity and pop-punk energy. It’s an amazing feeling, but it’s definitely weird for me.” “Having a crowd, a following of people who are thoroughly engaged in the music, it just feels weird. When we were opening for Boys Like Girls at the Ogden Theatre, it was like impostor syndrome for us, because we did start in a room where we were playing to the bartender and the other bands,” says the vocalist and bassist. The combination of so many local bands playing pop punk and eager audiences is still a little trippy for Martinez. “It’s been cool to see pop punk get a little bit of notoriety in that scene, and some of that coming back on the radio stations locally, as well.” They kind of stuck more in the indie, alt-rock space for the most part,” he says. “If you looked at three, four years ago, you’d see no punk bands at all. O’Neal points to those shows, in particular, as a sign that the music scene had shifted in Denver. The band has since played the Underground Music Showcase and Channel 93.3’s Big Gig, and even opened for Boys Like Girls, proving that pop punk never truly died. You wouldn’t have a set pop-punk lineup like you do now."īut Bury Mia stayed the course. Martinez, a clean-shaven elder emo with black gauges and swoop bangs, adds, “It was a hard time as a band in the ’teens. It felt like we were the only band doing it, or there were a very limited number of bands doing it at that time, but we just wanted to play that music.” “The scene in Denver.was kind of dead circa 2016. We were playing with more straightforward rock bands,” says O’Neal, who handles vocals and guitar. For the most part, when we were playing shows, we were playing with metal bands. I think we were going against the grain at that time. “I would say there was actually not a ton of appeal. Few, if any, bands can say they were there at the beginning of that second wave like Bury Mia can. Nearly a decade later, bandmates Justin O’Neal and Devin Martinez recall their humble beginnings and how a recent, unexpected pop-punk resurgence spawned a healthy scene in the Mile High City. They called it Bury Mia, making music inspired by the likes of Green Day and Taking Back Sunday.Ī lot has changed since then. But that didn't stop a group of friends in Denver from forming a pop-punk band, having grown up during the genre's first wave in the 2000s. Nationally, pop punk was considered cheesy, tired and all but dead in pop culture, a mere blip on the musical map that was to be quickly forgotten. The days of Blink-182 and Fall Out Boy dominating the airwaves ended abruptly and gave way to EDM and DJ club remixes, flushing the catchy, cheeky subgenre from the mainstream. It might be hard to believe now, but in 2015, playing pop punk was not cool or trendy, especially if you were a new band.
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