Pop-punk saved my life.
As a teenager struggling with then-undiagnosed depression, functional anxiety, and PTSD, listening to excessive amounts of angry emo music was really the only way I could express my inner chaos. While there are many bands that played a particularly emotional role in this time of my life, the biggest impact on me was seeing Pierce the Veil live for the first time. It was the first time, as a Mexican-American fan of a genre known for its candor, that I felt truly seen and welcomed by the alternative rock community.
I ran into the San Diego band on April 6, 2008 at Bamboozle Left in Irvine, California. Young and naive, I had no expectations when it came to mainstream concerts. I had no parental supervision, $30 to my name (which I spent on a My Chemical Romance t-shirt instead of food), and I was too young to face the pit. Instead, I found myself wandering the festival grounds looking for free snacks and an empty place to sit and enjoy the music.
Imagine my surprise when I went to the back of the amphitheater to find a quartet of post-hardcore musicians pouring their heart and soul into their set in front of a barely there audience. Even though their music was catchy, what really drew me in was the fact that the band was made up entirely of Mexican-Americans.
Katja Ogrin via Getty Images
I was shocked to see a Latinx band playing at a big festival, and when I looked at the small crowd that had gathered to hear them, I was surprised to see that they all looked like me. It was a beautiful moment of representation in my life to see that I’m not the only Latinx kid struggling with these overwhelming emotions. That night I came home and downloaded their album “A Flair for the Dramatic” onto my iPod and never looked back. I was going to see them a few more times on the Warped Tour and a few smaller shows in Southern California and New York over the next 10 years.
While Pierce the Veil was never as big as Fall Out Boy or Panic! At the Disco, their fan base was incredibly devoted, with people from all over the world falling in love with the Mexican-American rockers. However, it wasn’t until 2022 that I felt they finally got the recognition they deserved.
Much like the success the band has found on Tumblr lately, social media has brought the band back to international popularity, with Gen Z taking their tracks to TikTok and creating several unexpectedly popular trends.
One such trend featured a sped-up version of “A Match Into Water,” with the creators lip-syncing to makeshift microphones strung from the ceiling. One user used a suspended nail polish bottle in a trending video that has since had nearly 4 million views and 1 million likes. The creator commented on the video saying that they are being bullied for being “emo” because they listen to PTV outside of TikTok trends.
Another much bigger trend was on the “For You” page for weekly and involved the creators using transitions to amplify the notes of “King For a Day,” featuring Sleeping With Sirens frontman Kellin Quinn. Some creators have even gone so far as to use it to alternate between their before and after photos, like @annaxsitar, who has over 12 million followers, did for her scary beauty look of the season. The trend was so big that even stars like Lizzo and Landon Barker joined in. The trend’s popularity saw the track reach #1 on the Billboard Hard Rock charts a decade after its release.
“Our young fans have always been our main inspiration for creating new music. We have endless love and respect for them because they are the ones who come to the shows and listen to our music. They’re the ones who create the music culture,” singer and guitarist Vic Fuentes told HuffPost about TikTok’s unexpected success.
Procuring its renaissance on the back of Gen Z vibes, PTV used the app to promote its latest single, “Pass Nirvana.” Unexpectedly, the announcement of this track helped their 2012 single “Bulls In the Bronx” go semi-viral, with Latinx fans celebrating the band’s long-awaited return with aspects of their own culture. The user @kenya_sophia folk dance to the track, which has received over 2.2 million views and over 517,000 likes. It went so viral that the band actually invited her to sing on stage with them a an upcoming concert.
“We try to represent our Mexican culture wherever we are in the world,” Fuentes says of his band’s appreciation of their heritage. It aims to support this celebration of Mexican and other Latin American cultures by encouraging fans to show their pride at shows. “Whether it’s through our songs, playing traditional music in our live intros or Jaime [Preciado]Our bassist, wearing his Mexico soccer jersey on stage.”
It’s the band’s unabashed and continued support of their Latinx fans that has kept me listening for nearly a decade. Through the best of times and the worst of times, the band proved that they weren’t going to let the commercial music industry tell them who they should be. As their hometown newspaper put it more than 10 years ago, PTV brings “Spanish-flavored metal to the masses” with their take on “Mexi-core” to the pop-punk scene. And that remains true today.
“[Our culture is] an important part of who we are and that will never change,” Fuentes said. “We love seeing our fans raise Mexican flags at our shows and connect with us in a special way.”
