I spent much of my adult life trying to separate myself from the word “emo.” Sure, part of that was an effort to grow beyond my adolescent self, but the much larger part was a protest to how the word had been stolen by the guylinered mallcore bands of the mid-aughts that I had no interest in at all.

But the truth is, no matter what My Chemical Romance and Panic! At the Disco did with culture’s idea of emo, that doesn’t change my deep love of bands like Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, Further Seems Forever, et al.

The last several years, I’ve discovered I’m not alone in that. Much of this is due to an online community called Midwest Emoposting, which introduced me to scores of folks with the same idea of what emo should be, which reignited my deep love of the genre. That also introduced me to a number of bands carrying that flame, such as CATERPILLARS, whose new album Frontier For the Fallen is a masterclass in propulsive, sweeping, emotive songcraft.

It’s been a long time since I first heard CATERPILLARS though. In that time, they’ve gone from Band I Would See Posted About Sometimes to labelmates of mine through Friend Club Records, an entity that was also born from the same Facebook group. They’ve released two records since then—Where Shadows Go to Speak in 2020 and this one.

Frontier for the Fallen arrives as the band rounds out a decade of playing together, and it sounds like it. Their compositions are organic and effortless, despite the massive size of their soundscapes, which augment a typical four-piece rock lineup with studio flourishes like keyboards, strings, and electronics.

The resulting record is a powerhouse. It hits all of the nostalgia of second-wave emo heroes, from the atmospheric grandeur of Elliott (“Chapters“) to the no-frills rock of Jimmy Eat World (“Fight Left“) to the glitching rhythms of Christie Front Drive (“Parallel Universe“) to the heart-rending sentimentality of Mineral—whose Chris Simpson appears on “Satellites.”

And after nine years of putting their nose to the grindstone, CATERPILLARS has honed their own voice to the point that they can employ all these various influences while retaining their own voice. Now they’re veritable veterans who are waiting for a moment to explode. If there’s any justice in the world (a big if, I know), Frontier for the Fallen will bring that moment.