third album

Their third album, A Band in Hope , was released in March 2008. Like the previous album, A Band In Hope was the result of the band’s collaboration with several different producers: Tim Armstrong , Mike Green, John Feldmann, Nick Hexum, Miles Hurwitz, John Paulsen and Paul Ruxton. The band embarked on that spring’s Alternative Press Tour with All Time Low , The Rocket Summer , and Forever the Sickest Kids to support it. The album found the band moving further away from pop punk, incorporating elements of album-oriented rock , mainstream Top 40 paradigms, and alternative rock . The San Francisco Chronicle called it “a tidy mass of musical ideas — metal , glam and punk all mingle, lots of vocals, textured, carefully layered sound, sometimes like a pocket-size Queen .” Meanwhile PunkNews stated plainly, “This album is epic. There is so much growth in both their musicianship and lyrics that it’s hard to believe that this is the same band that released their last two albums.” An AllMusic review also drew a comparison to Queen, as well as to Andrew Lloyd Webber , saying “the Matches don’t seem to know exactly what they’re doing […] big chunks of A Band in Hope are almost shockingly unexpected, verging at times on just plain weird.” On that note, The Flat Hat noted: “what seems like the emergence of a different band on each track … might sound like a recipe for disaster. It isn’t. The album’s thumping drums, clean guitars and soaring vocals will stop you in your tracks.” This writer also asked whether “operatic falsettos, erupting in a fury of crashing thunder and straight up Les Mis-style gang vocals [might be] Cheesy?” and concluded “Sure, but tell that to your fist, because it’ll still be raised high.” Reflecting on the album a year and half later, Harris remarked that “on Decomposer and A Band in Hope , we played around with a lot of studio tricks—especially Decomposer , which was us learning about a bunch of studio tricks. And then on A Band in Hope , we got carried away a number of times.” “Wake the Sun” was released as the album’s single, and music videos were released for it and “Yankee in a Chip Shop”. According to Harris, Epitaph did not expect the album to perform well commercially, but opted to release it anyway. It ultimately reached number 24 on the Independent Albums chart, number 179 on the Billboard 200 , and number 99 on Australia’s ARIA Charts .