Lifetime Throw Off Pete Wentz's Shackles

Jersey hardcore punks Lifetime had an immortal run in the mid/late '90s; their template, as much or more as anyone else's, was the final late-stage emo adaptation that set the table for the dudes who would almost make money playing similar music--the Get Up Kids, Jimmy Eat World--and then finally for those who actually did make money: Fall Out Boy, Paramore, All-American Rejects, etc. Lifetime were not around to take part.

The band broke up in 1997 after a particularly great show, right around the time their third record, Jersey's Best Dancers, came out. 2005 reunion shows birthed a 2006 reformation. In a turn I'd like to call baffling but which actually made tremendous amounts of sense, Fall Out Boy's Pete Wentz was the guy to come in and offer a record deal. After issuing a defensive statement ("Pete and Decaydance are giving us an opportunity to the make the record we want to make while still staying in control of our music and our lives...") Lifetime accepted the offer, and recorded 2007's Lifetime, an actually pretty solid quasi-hardcore record that disappeared straight into the ether, probably because it was on Decaydance, a label that had very little to say to the people who'd loved Lifetime in the first place.

Today Punknews reports that the band has been ceremoniously moved from the "active" section of the Fueled By Ramen website to the "alumni" section, presumably meaning this brief experiment has concluded. While it's probably too much to expect these guys to have much more of a run, no matter where they land, this news is nevertheless heartening, if only because the odd and intrusively shimmering production of Lifetime is presumably also now consigned to the past. The Lifetime link off the Decaydance site takes you here: make of that what you will.