Combat are a Baltimore combo making unhinged party rock in the pop-punk/emo vein, like PUP or Prince Daddy with a Los Campesinos! streak. Their new album Stay Golden was produced by Origami Angel’s Ryland Heagy and is coming out in August on Counter Intuitive Records; its invigorating title track is out today. “Brokenhearted kids don’t party like their parents did in the ’90s!” Holden Wolf sings, one of many memorable lines crammed into the two-minute runtime. They also managed to fit some ska breakdowns in there.

Wolf shares some background on the album:

Stay Golden was written in my freshman and sophomore year of college as I was trying to figure out how to act like an adult while also trying to tour in my band 2-3 times a year as well as continue to run the record label I had started when I was 15. This is an album about struggling to identify with my own identity that I’d created for myself and most notably struggling to identify with the music scene. It’s about trying to understand what it means to “Stay Golden” as a sort of ideal way of living to me and to the people around me.

In a statement to The Alternative, Wolf added some context on the title track in particular:

We chose this song to be the first single because it felt like the only obvious first one to show off. It was the first song written for the record and subsequently set the tone for and inspired all the songs that would be written thereafter, sonically and lyrically. The song went through countless iterations that didn’t seem to quite click but we were incredibly lucky to be working with Ryland from Origami Angel in and out of the studio, which really helped bring the song to life.

Watch director Austin Ryder’s “Stay Golden” video below.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Intro”
02 “Stay Golden”
03 “Faith”
04 “Put Me In, Coach”
05 “Good News”
06 “Full Speed Ahead”
07 “Cool For A While”
08 “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 1”
09 “Stay Golden (Reprise)”
10 “Happy Again”
11 “Merrow Lanes”
12 “Compound Sentences”
13 “Epic Season Finale”
14 “Weird Ending Explained, Pt. 2”

Stay Golden is out 8/16 on Counter Intuitive.