San Diego’s SeeYouSpaceCowboy have a polished but punishing take on screamo and metalcore, a hyperactive and expressive version of the stuff that was running wild on the Warped Tour circa 2005. Two years ago, the band released their album The Romance Of Affliction, which had production from Knocked Loose’s Isaac Gale and collaborations with members of Underoath and Every Time I Die. (Every Time I Die were still a band then.) Today, SYSC have followed that LP with a brand new standalone single.

SeeYouSpaceCowboy’s new rager “Chewing The Scenery” covers a whole lot of ground in less than four minutes. The song starts out with contemplative, harmony-heavy stadium emo before going into theatrical chaotic-freakout mode and turning on the heavy-breakdown guitar judders. Lyrically, the band gets into the strange nature of performing your own distress for audiences: “This is how it ends! !Don’t fool yourself! This must be the end! Swan song!”

Here’s what bandleader Connie Sgarbossa says about the song:

This is one of the first songs we wrote when we locked ourselves in a cabin in the Poconos to figure out what we wanted to do with the sound of SYSC moving forward. Somehow, me saying I wanted a waltz part in a song turned into this expansion of the chaotic post-hardcore sound we had done on The Romance Of Affliction but with sprinkles of new “brighter” elements we wanted to sprinkle into the new songs that we were making. This track served as a proof of concept for the beginning of playing around with whatever we wanted to and showed us that we can push without the confines of genre and style and still create something that sounded cohesive.

Lyrically, this song reflects the melodrama and conflict of relationships but recontextualized as a theatrical play you are putting on for the world. It deals with the debate about whether love can be just bliss and happiness, or if you have to acknowledge and accept the pain and frustration that can and most likely will accompany it, as well as dealing with that realization. “This act is a charade / we forgot our lines / it’s time to improvise / shred this useless script / Let’s get a round of applause.”

Check it out below.

“Chewing The Scenery” is out now on Pure Noise.