By the time NEW FOUND GLORY had broken through with the release of their third album, 2002’s Sticks & Stones, they were well on their way to a permanent place on pop-punk’s Mount Rushmore thanks to a inimitable blend of punk-rock ethos, hardcore energy, and razor-sharp melodicism. Smash singles “Hit Or Miss” and “My Friends Over You” had launched a thousand garage bands, even inspiring up-and-coming acts to crib their names from NFG’s lyrics, but it was 2004’s CATALYST that cemented the Coral Springs, Florida, legends as not just one of the most influential pop-punk bands ever, but a mainstream power player as well.

“It never really feels like 20 years,” says guitarist Chad Gilbert looking back. “If I think about Catalyst being 20, it means Nothing Gold Can Stay must be 100, because Catalyst always felt like a newer album to me.”

Louder, darker and heavier than its predecessors, Catalyst marked the sound of the band (Gilbert, vocalist Jordan Pundik, bassist Ian Grushka and drummer Cyrus Bolooki) pushing back at what was expected of them, sidestepping the natural inclination to slow down and mellow out – and, in the process, becoming more popular than ever.

“We were coming off ‘My Friends Over You’ and had the pressure of fans going, ‘Oh, what’s this band going to turn into?” Gilbert remembers. “We decided to keep being ourselves. Rock bands were going a little more pop at that time, but we wanted to carve out a lane for ourselves and say, ‘Look, we’re part of this genre and love it, but we’re also one of a kind and different.’”

This new direction was evident from the album’s opening strains: the white-hot hardcore “Intro” that pulled no punches in its critiques of the music industry (“It's more than a T-shirt, it's more than a tattoo/It's more than a phase, this is how I was raised”) into first single “All Downhill From Here,” which showcased a more muscular, riff-forward sound for the band that ironically became a staple on MTV’s TRL, where it was so popular it had to be retired and pulled from rotation.

The legacy of Catalyst – and New Found Glory as a whole – is in this sort of juxtaposition, the band’s effortless ability to Trojan Horse their more rough-hewn influences into anthemic, hooky offerings. One minute, they’re launching four-on-the-floor Cars-era new wave (“Failure’s Not Flattering”), high-octane skate punk (“Truth Of My Youth”) and ascendant string-laden balladry (“I Don’t Wanna Know”), the next they’re welcoming cameos from members of hardcore legends Madball and H2O and trading in double-bass breakdowns (“At Least I’m Known For Something”) and smoky, minor-key dynamism (“Ending In Tragedy”).

All of this combined to propel the Neal Avron-produced set to a career-best No. 3 on the Billboard 200, promptly going Gold and launching the band into arenas supporting Green Day along with their first live DVD, This Disaster. Now, two decades after New Found Glory planted their flag in pop culture, the band are set to celebrate the album with CATALYST 20 YEARS LATER, a coast-to-coast North American run featuring special guests Sincere Engineer. Audiences will hear all the hits, yes, but also the deep album cuts that have grown into fan favorites over time.

“We play shows now and people go off for these random album tracks, songs that no one gave a crap about back then,” Gilbert says with a laugh. “When you released a new CD back in the day, people didn’t respond to the songs until six months or a year later because there was no streaming. People liked Catalyst, but it took a couple tours to really resonate because it was so different. Now we can go out and play a song like ‘Your Biggest Mistake’ and see people losing their minds.”

Two decades later, it’s easy to hear the album’s influence not just on the pop-punk genre writ large, but New Found Glory’s career trajectory. From the warm hue of Catalyst’s follow-up, 2006’s Coming Home, to repeated collaborations with hardcore labels Triple B, Bridge 9 and Revelation Records, nothing is off-limits for the quartet – and that’s just the way they like it.

“Fans trust us because of albums like Catalyst,” Gilbert says proudly. “We can make these records and branch out creatively, and they know we’re never going to do something really weird. We are who we are, and I love that we can play whatever and still crush it.” XX

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