Rival Schools celebrates 25th anniversary with tour stop in Philly

After “uniting by fate” roughly 25 years ago, Rival Schools is marking its near-three-decade run as a band with reissues and a tour, including a stop at First Unitarian Church on Monday.

Rival Schools is back in Philly for the second time this year, after opening for Thursday at the Theatre of Living Arts in February. For the band’s frontman, born-and-bred New Yorker Walter Schreifels, Philadelphia is very familiar.

“Philly just has a lot of what New York has,” Schreifels said. “And it’s sort of like going over and spending summer with the cousins, that’s what I always feel like in Philly.”

The band came about as Schreifels’ hard-hitting post-hardcore outfit, Quicksand, split up in the late 1990s. Soon after, he started compiling demos and brought in some of his friends to fill out the unit.

“Once we had enough material together, I already had a record contract, so it was sort of like ‘create your own band,’ ” Schreifels said. “I guess it could have been a solo thing, but I guess I felt more comfortable doing a band project.”

In 2001, the band dropped their debut album, United By Fate. While it flew under the radar at the time of its release, its influence within rock and post-hardcore circles has grown over the decades. Rival Schools disbanded shortly after when making preparations for their second record, which was later released as the compilation Found.

Schreifels said that the initial breakup isn’t really a “unique story,” but a common tale of how bands “run their course.”

“I think there’s like an aspect when we were like really, really in it, and we toured a lot,” Schreifels said. “We were on a major label schedule and we were at a younger age, so I think it was intense. Also, where we were as people, it maybe was too serious at a certain point to where it just wasn’t fun anymore.”

The band reunited at the tail end of the 2000s and released Pedals in 2011. While the band went dormant again in the last decade, Rival Schools has maintained a steady touring regiment throughout the 2020s so far.

“Now, we do it really on our own terms,” Schreifels said. “And as people, we always got along, we just crack each other up, so we have a great time when we’re together and our chemistry is really awesome. I love those guys.”

Last month, the band teamed up with Run For Cover Records to reissue the band’s discography and dropped a music video for the Pedals b-side, “You Should Have Hung Out,” ahead of the album’s deluxe rerelease. When Schreifels heard that song for the first time in a while, he said he had “forgotten it existed.”

“I was shocked that we didn’t put it on the album because I think it’s such a good song,” Schreifels said. “I’m biased, but I think it’s a great record. I really am proud of it, so that we had these b-sides that didn’t even make it that were actually freaking good. So looking back at it, I was like, ‘Oh shit, we kind of fucked up. But alright, at least we got something to show for it.’ ”

On top of performing in Rival Schools, Schreifels also cuts his teeth with the seminal hardcore punk band, Gorilla Biscuits, which headlined This Is Hardcore in 2023. If that wasn’t enough work for Walter, Quicksand reunited in the 2010s and has gone on to release two records, including Distant Populations in 2021.

“I think that it’s really kind of amazing that there’s a demand for all of it,” Schreifels said. “I don’t know that there’s any one band that I could do throughout the whole year that would be everything to me or make sense to exclude all the others … I am super busy, so it is something to juggle with actually being home and being present there as well, but I really love it.”

After the Rival Schools tour wraps up, Schreifels will head back on the road with Quicksand, including a show at Underground Arts next March. When asked if he’ll be working on a long-awaited Rival Schools followup, Schreifels said they’re going to “let things take course,” noting that he’s always been “a big fan of the element of surprise.”

Tickets for Monday’s show start at $30. Doors open at 7 p.m., and the show starts at 7:30. Webbed Wing, Hollow Suns, and Twowayradio will be the supporting acts.

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