I can’t hear you: A Pierce The Veil retrospective.
Looking back on Pierce The Veil's discography in honor of their 2025 all-albums tour.
collage by Jina Jeon.
San Diego-based rock band Pierce The Veil has been influential in the post-hardcore and 2000s “emo kid” scene since their arrival in 2006, combining pop-punk and post-hardcore elements with their own dramatic flair. Their music is notably more theatrical and dynamic than typical pop punk music, featuring unconventional music structures and intricate guitar work that differentiates their sound. Through their lyrical storytelling and portrayal of love, heartbreak, and mental health, Pierce The Veil has captured the heart of the alternative music community for nearly two decades.
Pierce The Veil’s music is built on dichotomies, featuring aggressive post-hardcore riffs and metal vocals alongside pop punk and clean vocals. Many tracks include Spanish guitar work, drawing from their Latin American heritage. In 2024, Pierce The Veil announced their 2025 I Can’t Hear You Tour, which is to cover all five of their studio albums. Looking back at the band’s discography reveals their unique charm and the captivating soundscape that has allowed them to garner a cult following.
Pierce The Veil’s 2007 debut album A Flair for the Dramatic stands out with its passionate lyrics focusing on the highs and lows of a relationship. Standout track and fan favorite “Yeah Boy and Doll Face” opens with a pop-inspired acoustic guitar before picking up with post-hardcore guitars and drums that continue until the end. The song embodies dynamism with moments of muted vocals and isolated guitars interspersed with scream vocals and grating basses.“The Cheap Bouquet” demonstrates Pierce The Veil’s ability to weave between loud and quiet moments.The song also rejects the typical verse-to-chorus-to-verse formula, as each section is sonically and rhythmically unique, setting the stage for the sounds that will represent the rest of their career.
Selfish Machines, Pierce The Veil’s second studio album released in 2010, continues their trend of dynamic rock music. One of their most loved tracks, “Caraphernelia,” begins with rapid drums accompanied by lead singer Vic Fuentes’ high-pitched vocals before transitioning to a back-and-forth call-and-response between clean and metal vocals in the chorus. The album is notably wide-spanning, as tracks like “The Boy Who Could Fly” and “Besitos” are fast and upbeat while “Kissing in Cars” and “Stay Away From My Friends” are pop-inspired ballads with minimal production. A major theme on this album is destruction, specifically of a relationship that the speaker begs their lover not to abandon. “Don't ruin a perfect thing, a perfect thing/The boy on the blue moon dreams of sun” Fuentes sings on “The Boy Who Could Fly,” following up with “Can we create something beautiful and destroy it?” on “Disasterology.” There is a seething tension between pleasure and temporality, affection and destruction, and loving and losing. Selfish Machines continues to boast Pierce The Veil’s duality in their sound and lyrics that play with tension and self-contradiction.
Collide With the Sky is undoubtedly Pierce The Veil’s most well-known and commercially successful album. Released in 2012, it picks up on the emotionally-charged theatricalism of Selfish Machines and drives it up to the next level. Popular tracks “King For a Day” and “Match Into Water” are high-octane, fast-paced, quintessential “emo kid” songs with thunderous drums and distorted guitars, while fan favorite “Hold On Till May” exposes a tender, comforting side of the album. The combination of raw, emotional and romantic lyrics with head-banging production makes Collide With the Sky understandably the most beloved record.
Misadventures, released in 2016, takes on a more pop-punk sound than Pierce The Veil’s previous releases, featuring “Circles” as its most streamed track. “Circles” is sonically reminiscent of other early 2000s pop-punk love songs such as “Check Yes, Juliet” by We The Kings or “Ocean Avenue” by Yellowcard. Indeed, Misadventures has a slightly softer, more radio-friendly sound compared to the first three albums, though tracks like “Dive In” and “Today I Saw The Whole World” still maintain the loosely-structured dynamism that give the band their charm.
Pierce The Veil’s most recent album The Jaws of Life, released in 2023, is the most significant departure from their signature sound. The lead single “Pass the Nirvana” is more streamlined and uniform than their previous hits, while “Even When I’m Not With You” and “Emergency Contact” are comparatively subdued and pop-infused. Despite mixed reviews from longtime fans, glimmers of the band’s signature songwriting style still swim beneath the exterior. “Even When I’m Not With You” exemplifies this change—while the sound itself is more repetitive and poppy than previous releases, the lyrics reveal what fans love the most about Pierce The Veil. “It's good to know that I'm the only one who can cut you further/What is love besides two souls trying to heal each other,” Fuentes sings in the outro, embodying the romantic and intimate world that Pierce The Veil builds with their music.
The continuities and contradictions in Pierce The Veil’s musical evolution is part of what continues to draw fans today. The I Can’t Hear You tour encapsulates the bands’ stories and genres across five eras, demonstrating both the band’s departures and loyalty to their original style. The fans’ consistent enthusiasm is indicative of Pierce The Veil’s timelessness and proves that their stories outlast temporary music trends.
edited by Greta Irvine.
collage by Jina Jeon.
