"We set out to write the record that we would have written when we were in 7th grade, if we had any idea how to write music when we were in 7th grade." The concept of "1996" was to create a record of pure pop punk gold... our contribution to the 90's and a decade of incredible music that has since faded away into something "darker" and we wanted to attempt to bring back the light side of punk rock. It was intended only to be an EP, 6 or 7 songs quickly written to hold people over while we worked on the follow up the "Never Give Up, Never Give In," but as we wrote more and more we just got more and more excited about these songs, and the memories they were bringing us back to, that we decided to just make it a full length record. We did this one old school. Instead of going into a recording studio, we just set up a handful of recording equipment in a basically empty room off of the balcony of our church. We went in after ten every night bec...