20 YEARS OF ENERGY

Today, April 1, 2026 marks the 20th anniversary since Energy first debuted our music to the world. While Energy may have gone through more lineup changes over the last ten years than Guns N' Roses and completely ceased all touring activity years ago - it remains the primary vehicle for my artistic output.

My friend Conor and I had been trying to start a band for a while by the time him and I crossed paths with what would turn out to be the first incarnation of Energy. We knew that we wanted to be in a band, that he would play bass / I would be the singer, and that we wanted to play punk music. My brother introduced us to guitarist Mikey D. who introduced us to his friends Rob and Burton. We hardly liked any of the same bands, but Operation Ivy was one band that we all could agree on, so I thought it would only be fitting to name the band after their only proper studio album “Energy”.

(Left to right) Burton Wright, Rob Spearin, Tank, Mikey D., Conor O'Brien

On March 31st, 2006, Energy headed to Uxbridge, MA to record our first two song demo at Echo Room Studios. It was an eight our recording session, and I had no idea what I was doing. I wasn’t even sure if I knew that was how I wanted the songs to end up sounding or not, but the band booked the studio time without consulting me...so off I went.

We left the studio and (if memory serves me correctly) had the demo online a little after midnight that night.

Within 24 hours, a friend of mine said that this label called “Rock Vegas Records” was interested in signing us. I couldn’t believe it. Someone wanted to put money into a recording session for my music, and release it on their label. It’s what any 21 year old kid starting a band would want. A week or so later, I met up with Kris from RVR and he told me that he wanted to get us to record a 5 or 6 song E.P. at The Outpost in my hometown of Stoughton, MA. This all seemed so surreal. Ever since I was a young teenager, I had listened to records that were recorded at The Outpost and fantasized about someday being afforded the opportunity to record there.

On April 20th, we played our very first show. I remember thinking that it was going to be the greatest moment of my life up until that point, and it honestly was. Everyone I had ever talked to told me that every band’s first show is a disaster, so I was expecting to have to really win over the crowd. I was prepared for that. What I wasn’t prepared for was the sea of people who would already know all of the words to the two song demo that we had recorded 3 weeks prior. I am so glad that someone filmed this show, because I would have had my doubts by now as to whether or not my mind had exaggerated the crowd’s reaction over the years.

We spent the next few months playing out as often as possible, touring for the first time, and writing for what would become our debut E.P. “Punch The Clock”. In that time, we had already made our first of many lineup changes. We replaced founding drummer Burton Wright with an old, childhood friend of mine from Stoughton - Mike Assatly. Following the completion of the writing process, tensions grew between certain members of the band and Mikey D. was let go before recording sessions for our forthcoming E.P. began.

Shortly thereafter, we were asked to play the Boston date of the Vans Warped Tour on the Rock Vegas Records / Bridge Nine Records stage. We needed a second guitarist, so I begged Joe Freedman (another familiar name from Stoughton) to fill in for us for at least that one show. Joe agreed, and we played the show. I couldn’t believe it...my band that was only 4 months old was playing Warped Tour.

Artwork by Eric Tankerley

On September 15th, 2006 we headed into The Outpost with producer Jim Seigel to record “Punch The Clock”. We spent the first day tracking instruments live with me playing the rhythm guitar parts, and the second day recording vocals. Days 3 and 4 were spent mixing while the band wasn’t there. We recorded 9 tracks. 7 originals, and two covers. One of which made it to the original pressing of PTC. Later that year (for the first time in my life) I was holding in my hands a professionally packaged CD of original music that I had written and recorded. It was all I had ever wanted to do ever since I first picked up a guitar at the age of 13 or 14.

Punch The Clock

After the release of “Punch The Clock”, we embarked on a number of tours that I once again begged Joe to come on. Of course more tensions began to grow on tour though, and we all quickly realized that our other founding guitarist Rob wasn’t fitting in too well. After a tour in early 2007, Rob was let go and Joe’s friend Dan was invited to join as our rhythm guitarist. It was during this time that I convinced Joe to join the band for real. We had a shared vision of what this band could be, and it only became clearer and clearer once we started writing together.

The first song we wrote together was “Hail The Size Of Grapes”. I knew at that moment that I was finally in the band that I had always imaged myself being in. In the beginning, I viewed Energy’s sound as somewhat of a compromise for me due to the conflicting musical tastes between a lot of the members, but I was so eager just to get something going that I didn’t care. The stuff that Joe and I were working on was truly something else. It was the sound I had always dreamed of creating.

03/19/07

We played a show on March 19, 2007 at The Roxy in Boston where I first met Karl at Bridge Nine Records. Karl told me how much he liked my band, but it seemed fairly casual so I didn’t think into it too much. It was shortly before we headed out on another tour in support of “Punch The Clock” that I received an email from him asking if we had any new material written. It was then that I started to realize that they were interested in us. I quickly arranged for us to record a new demo with producer Chris Curran, which became our “Summer 2007 Demo”. It was our first session in a long standing relationship with Chris, and it seemed to impress B9 because they signed us right after I sent them the songs.

We spent the rest of the summer touring and promoting our new songs, and the rest of 2007 into 2008 writing for what would eventually become our debut LP “Invasions Of The Mind”. During these months we went through a number of drummers until we decided to have Justin Flaherty record the album with us. Justin is easily the best drummer that Energy had ever had behind the kit, and was an obvious choice. We recorded IOTM in May/June of 2008 with Chris Curran at his home studio, and it was mixed by Jay Maas. We left for tour one or two days after completing the recording process to immediately start promoting the new album before it was even out.

Invasions Of The Mind

We released “Invasions Of The Mind” through Bridge Nine Records on September 30th, 2008. We managed to get on a full U.S. tour with H2O and Bane just in time for the release of the album. It was perfect. Everything was all lined up, and I couldn’t have asked for a better way to promote my proudest effort to date. The shows were great, and we made new fans that we would have never been able to reach before. We even had a decent sized spread in Alternative Press!

It was around this time that one of my all time favorite bands Slapshot asked us to come tour Europe with them for 3 weeks. Again, I couldn’t believe it. Amazing things just kept happening to me and my band over and over. Even though I was terrified of flying (and still am), I said yes. The European tour started shortly after the tour with H2O ended, and we spent November-December of 2008 touring Europe with Slapshot.

After we got back, we did a string of shows with Four Year Strong and Set Your Goals from December 26th-December 29th. Once again though, differences between band members became too much and Justin was let go. Drummer Keith Sidorowicz took his place for a little less than the next year of the band.

2009 saw Energy continuing to support “Invasions Of The Mind” with tour after tour all throughout the year. By the end of the year though, a lot of us had grown pretty tired of constantly touring without seeing much of a spike in popularity. It was becoming increasingly evident that with our sound, we needed to be playing outside of the hardcore scene much more often.

In the fall of 2009, we toured the U.S. once again. This time with The Wonder Years and A Loss For Words. This was an attempt to play to audiences that were a little more receptive to the idea of vocal melody. Unfortunately, I think we were a little too dark and depressing for the the majority of a pop punk audience. Too much singing for hardcore, too somber and serious for pop punk. We were always too “something” for everything.

It was around this time that myself and most of the band members became completely disillusioned with the idea of trying to find our niche in the underground music scene. It didn’t help that Joe and I were having severe writer’s block and couldn’t seem to come up with any new music either. This is when we decided to have an old friend of ours back home join the band as our keyboard player. Mike Rendini joined the band because we all admired his songwriting abilities so much, and thought that squeezing him in as our keyboardist would be a great way to take some of the pressure off of Joe and I when it came to writing new material.

Walk Into The Fire

Our goal was to “take a break” from touring so much, and spend a good portion of 2010 working on putting together a follow-up E.P. titled “Walk Into The Fire”. Unfortunately we were unable to ever get Energy back on the road in support of this new E.P. Keith and Dan left the band, followed shortly thereafter by Joe. Energy was now a 4 piece act live with Mike moving over to guitar, and for the first time in the band’s history - me playing guitar and singing. We played out here and there in Massachusetts between 2011-2012, but didn’t do much else.

The band was stagnating. We had parted ways with Bridge Nine Records by 2011 and were releasing singles and E.P.’s independently online. The band had become a basement project. I love all of the music from this period of time, but something didn’t feel right. We weren’t very active live, but more importantly for me - I wasn’t writing much of anything anymore. Our first two records were from my heart and soul, and now it was someone else’s words that I was singing most of the time. This eventually led to Mike’s departure from the band in February of 2012. I put together a compilation album of all the material I had ever recorded with Mike independently and titled it “Children Of The Night” after our side project that we started together back in 2006.

Children Of The Night

When Mike left, I’ll admit I was in panic mode. I hadn’t been writing full songs lyrically/vocally for Energy in years, and I knew that this meant I’d have to learn to write complete songs all by myself. This was something I had never done before in my entire life. I was terrified.

Now...a lot of people have asked me over the years why I still insist on calling the band Energy. In fact, I have been asked that dating as far back as 2007. People asked if I thought that we’d still be able to write good music without our founding guitarist in the band anymore. I knew that we were in the process of creating something really cool with Joe that (in our minds) blew our first E.P. “Punch The Clock” out of the water, so we kept on going. We released “Invasions Of The Mind” and the song “400” quickly became our most popular song live. That was my personal reassurance that I had done the right thing by continuing on with the band instead of starting a new one. The momentum from all of our hard work leading up to IOTM was a big part of what helped “400” and IOTM go over so well with audiences across the country. I thought the same thing when Joe left and Mike became the primary songwriter. To us, “Walk Into The Fire” sounded like the right direction to go in so we went with it even though it wasn’t me writing anymore.

New Worlds Of Fear / Apparition Sound

Everything since then has been me - the common denominator throughout this whole journey, writing it all. Nothing has ever felt more right to me than releasing songs like “Another Yesterday”, and knowing that all of it came from my heart and soul. I finally have that feeling inside that I got when I first started the band and poured my emotions out in the lyrics in the first place.

A lot of people might not call Energy a “band” anymore, and in a lot of ways it isn’t. The members of the band are essentially interchangeable and they know it. Conor, the only other original member of the band only joins us occasionally when we play live/record now because of his busy work schedule. Hell, even I toyed with the notion of just calling it a solo act because that’s essentially what it is at this point. I don’t care though. I pretty much drew a line in the sand when I released “New Worlds Of Fear” in 2013 under the name “Energy”. That was that. Anything I write all by myself after that is no different, so why would I all of a sudden call it something else at this point?

After the release of this body of work, the band went on to tour the United Kingdom for the first time ever in March of 2017 with the band CREEPER.

Following the band’s tour in support of CREEPER, we were asked to return to the UK for a headlining tour later that year in July.

Since I had a number of new songs written, we recorded our EP “Under The Mask” knowing that it would be a good idea to have new material to head over there with.

Under The Mask

Since then, the band has played off and on locally, and released a few singles here and there, and we plan on writing and recording new music eventually while continuing to play out live as often as possible.

Today marks a significant point in my life and I wanted to write about it.

ENERGY is now 20 years old.

I want to thank everyone from the bottom of my heart who has stuck it out with me through all these years and continues to keep up with everything I do musically. Energy’s music is the reason I keep going in life, and everyone and anyone who has ever identified with a single album or song that I have/will create will always hold a special place in my heart.

I don’t know what else to say.

Thanks again, and here’s to 20 more years of Energy.

~ Tank