Lou Rogai went back to the old tapes and found riffs he had written with Brian Craig on a practice recording from more than 30 years ago. The riffs were incomplete. Craig, Side Over‘s original drummer, had been gone for years. Out of those unfinished ideas and that ghost recording, the band built “Scars”, one of six songs on their first proper album. “It was like reuniting with his dormant spirit,” Rogai says. “He was alive in the music and could live on in a sense.”
That impulse runs through “Loves You“, out June 12 on Rogai’s own La Société Expéditionnaire (LSE 052). We are premiering the album in full a day early, on June 11.
Aaron Ferranti on vocals, Rogai on guitar, James Simon on bass, Kevin Darcy on drums. Recorded and engineered by Don Sternecker (Misfits, Luna, The Feelies) at Mixolydian, with additional tracking by Rogai at Customer Service. Produced by Rogai, mixed and mastered by Sternecker.
Side Over formed in 1989 and came up in a Northeastern PA hardcore network that was cross-pollinating with Philadelphia, Morgantown, and Syracuse.
They released two cassette demos in their first run.
The 1991 tape was a live soundboard recording from Reading’s Unisound Club.
The 1993 demo was picked up by John Dudeck through Very Distribution, and the band was set to release the first LP on Dudeck’s new label Edison Recordings, which went on to put out Starkweather, Coalesce, and Overcast.
The LP never got recorded. By 1994 they were playing the mid-Atlantic consistently, including Turning Point’s New Jersey reunion show, New Bedford Fest ’94, and the Life of Agony show that brought the venue ceiling down.
Then Craig left to tour with Turmoil, and the band pulled apart.
The album stayed unfinished for the next 30 years.
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The 2025 reunion wasn’t planned as a comeback. Co-founder and bassist Neil Husvar had died suddenly. A memorial benefit show, Hardcore for Husvar, put the surviving members in a room together for the first time in three decades.
They played, honouring Husvar alongside departed bandmates Brian Craig and Chris Pawloski. That show became the thing that started everything else.
“It’s a release that makes me feel like I’m closer to my friends from this band who aren’t here anymore,” Ferranti says. “It gives me a sense of peace and allows me to release all kinds of feelings. Being with my current and past bandmates feels like I’m sitting at a table with everyone present.”
Ferranti’s lyrics on “Scars” reach for that directly. “I thought, if I were a wizard, how would I do it? How would I change things and keep memories alive with magic? It’s not about changing the past but about rewriting the future.” Rogai describes it as a re-imagining of constellations to represent the departed.
There is a temptation with this kind of story to flatten it into nostalgia. Side Over keep dodging it. They’ve been playing basements again, DIY shows, the rooms they came up in. At a Philadelphia show with Suffer The Ghost, a band roughly the same age as Side Over’s own kids, the younger group posted the next morning, “We want Side Over to be our Dads”, and asked them to play their release show. “That was the signal that we indeed are doing the right thing,” Rogai says. “That our music is relevant to both ourselves and younger generations, not a nostalgia trip. It’s keeping us sharper than ever.”
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The Scranton/Wilkes-Barre scene that Side Over emerged from has gone through several waves since. “There’s no presumption that kids should know who we are,” Rogai says. “We were doing it before many of them were born. The satisfaction is seeing it all grow generationally.”
He points to Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, Tigers Jaw, The Menzingers, Title Fight, and Cold World as NEPA bands carrying the spirit forward, and Joystick Fury, Spoil, and Still Won’t Break as the current crop coming up.
Ferranti puts it: “The entire framework is there, it’s the same stuff we did when we were kids. The only difference is that our older brothers were in metal bands, which led us to playing clubs and getting more touring bands in. Kids will always find spots and it will always be groups of friends making it happen. The old heads are still there too, including us. We never left, we just weren’t driving it.”
Both founders kept making music in the intervening years. Rogai built La Société Expéditionnaire, which signed to Southern Records early on (Dischord was the template) and now runs through MVD Entertainment. Ferranti went to art school in Philadelphia and became a painter and a master glass-blower. “All of the time invested in other pursuits is simply fuel for creativity in every area of life,” Rogai says. For his part, Ferranti had sworn off being in another band.
“I actually stopped making music and swore I wasn’t going to be in a band anymore because of how much time and work it takes, only to have it fall apart so many times. I wanted to do Side Over forever, but everyone was doing their own gig. It was always our first passion, our first love, and it’s the only band I can find real expression in. Now we have it. It’s without our brothers who passed away, but they are with us in their spirit. I know they can hear what we’re doing and they’re with us somehow. The music is our healing.”
The writing process is no longer what it was. “When we were younger we would all come to practice with a little idea, maybe a drum beat, and it would go from there,” Ferranti says. “Now, we have more experience and more of a vision in our heads. I have a ton of lyrics that I’d saved for Side Over if it ever came back to life. This is more than just a project for me, it’s something I wanted to see through and do the right way. Our guys are no longer here to see it through with us, and it just feels like we’re writing the chapters they couldn’t join us for.”
Rogai talks about a different ratio of instinct to intention.
“When we were young, we all had real issues and inspirations, good and bad, to put into songs. We can still dip into that and understand it was the beginning of our journey. We know where we come from. Now, we have a much different perspective. We’ve lived decades of crazy lives with experiences that some of us didn’t survive. It’s just deeper and more dangerous waters, and it comes from weathering storms.” He talks about not always defaulting to first-take-best-take any more.
“Important questions to ask yourself: Is this creative gesture accurate to the spirit? Are we saying what we need to say? Is there an alternative approach to this version? Are we overthinking all of this? In the past, out of sheer naivete, we didn’t ask those questions. Now, it seems negligent not to ask them. The trick is knowing when we love it and when to stop.”
Putting “Loves You” out on his own label is its own statement of position. “If you want the freedom to do whatever you want, you have to be driven enough to make it happen and connect with the people who love it,” Rogai says. La Société Expéditionnaire turns 20 this year.
“Loves You” is out June 12 on 12″ marble vinyl, gatefold digipak CD, and digital. Side Over play a release-day in-store at Gallery of Sound in Wilkes-Barre at 7PM on June 12, followed by the official release party on June 27 at The Bog in Scranton with A Constant Murder and Loading. On July 25 they play Hardcore for Husvar II at St. Mary’s in Scranton, alongside Judge, Burial Ground, Controller, and Joystick Fury.
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