Shutdown has released its first new material in 25 years with a six-song EP called By Your Side, out now on Equal Vision Records. The record picks up where the Brooklyn-based band left off decades ago, combining the fiery intensity of its early years with a broader perspective on life and struggle.
Tracks are tied together by themes of perseverance, mental health, suicide prevention, and the unbreakable bond between friends and family.
The title track โBy Your Sideโ is, as Stereogum puts it, โa song about persevering โฆ Now, it seems like Shutdown is about to be back in full force.โ Brooklyn Vegan notes that โBy Your Side puts a slightly more melodic spin on the classic Shutdown sound, while taking on the heavy topic of suicide prevention and mental health education.โ
Flood highlights how โthese songs are all short and sharp, but the comfort and message that they offer will resonate and last a lot longerโif not a lifetime,โ while No Echo points out that โShutdownโs โBy Your Sideโ EP carries a lot of weight to it in the lyrical dept.โ
A standout track from this release is the new single โWhat Are You Thinking?,โ a song directly inspired by bassist Dion DeNardoโs son being diagnosed with autism.
Vocalist Mark Scondotto explains, โThat diagnosis taught Dion and even myself โ because my oldest son is on the autism spectrum โ to open ourselves up and learn more about who we are as people, especially compared to what we were taught when we were kids.โ The track ends with all of the band membersโ children singing its chorus over an acoustic guitar, offering the recordโs quietest and most powerful moment. It brings the core message of hope into focus, showing how far Shutdown has come since its beginnings in the mid-โ90s.
The group first formed in late 1994, when Scondotto, Steve DellaCroce (guitar), DeNardo (bass), and Jimmy McCormack (drums) were teenagers. They released their debut full-length, Against All Odds, in 1998, followed by the Something To Prove EP a year later and the album Few And Far Between in 2000. Even as a young band, they embraced positivity in the face of harsh realities. After years of touring and sporadic creative output, life got in the way, and Shutdown gradually faded into the background without any formal breakup.
โWe never officially broke up,โ says DellaCroce. โWe needed to stop touring, and we started doing a few other things. We all tried to play when we could, but it wasnโt consistent. A couple of us had side projects going so we could keep playing, and we would write some Shutdown songs once in a while, but we realized we needed a plan of what we wanted to do and what the band should sound like. Weโve talked a lot over the past couple of years about how weโve evolved and grown as musicians and songwriters, and we wanted everyone to hear what we were talking about.โ
That renewed focus led to By Your Side, six tracks emphasizing the same community, optimism, and hope that defined Shutdownโs youth, now filtered through older and wiser viewpoints. โThereโs a lot of hope on this release,โ Scondotto says. โI really think thatโs what the world needs right now.โ DellaCroce adds, โThat positivity is just how we roll, because it helped us when we were angry teenagers. To this day, when we write songs, we write them for us and whoever likes it likes it, but obviously it speaks to a lot of people and itโs helped us survive this long as humans. So it was essential to keep that message going with this EP.โ
