Above image via Instagram: @straightdecline
Giovanni Mori | Posted December 9th, 2025
Are you a fan of pop punk music? Or are you more on the old school, rough around the edges, classic punk side? Perhaps you like a little twist of emo and post hardcore as well? If you answered yes to all three, or even just one of those questions, Pittsburgh’s Straight Decline may be the band for you.
Their first EP, Mid-Semester Crisis, is full of larger than life riffs, technical playing, dramatic vocals, and catchy songwriting to relish in. The band consists of guitarists Nathan Feichtel and Brady Svor, drummer David Weisfield, vocalist Rory Kaplan, and bassist Ryan O’Connor. I had the pleasure of speaking with Feichtel, Svor, and Weisfield to discuss the EP’s five tracks, as well as the process that went into their songwriting as a band.
Feichtel: “The Mid-Semester Crisis EP was our first collection of anything that we did. It was kind of taking all the songs we had and narrowing them down to, you know, some of the best ones that fit in a certain theme, at least for that period of time.”
Photo by Giovanni Mori
The band has many influences across a variety of different genres, poured into what Feichtel called a “melting pot” that is Straight Decline, with each member referencing completely different bands and playing styles in their musicality. Here’s what they each had to say:
Feichtel: “Literally for the first twelve years of my life I only listened to Linkin Park, and then Chester [Bennington]’s death kind of got me to branch out more. It went into Fall Out Boy, Weezer, and lately I’ve been big in the post hardcore scene, I love Story of the Year, Thrice, Silverstein, Circa Survive, Rise Against, Green Day of course, and the latest one I’d say I’ve gotten really big into is Saosin.
Rory likes My Chemical Romance, Linkin Park, I know they have more of a theater background […] Rory’s been performing in various things for a long time, they are no stranger to getting on stage and singing in front of people, they do it pretty well. With Ryan, I know he’s a pretty big grunge guy, he likes Alice In Chains, Nirvana, he also likes indie stuff, his band that he swears by is Backseat Lovers.”
Svor: “There isn’t any music I don’t like, a lot of the stuff my friends put me on back in high school, like my one friend got me into They Might Be Giants big time, my other friend got me into all this midwest stuff like Origami Angel and Prince Daddy and the Hyena […] I try to keep it poppy with my writing, but that’s really just pop punk, and yeah I feel like there’s a lot of Green Day in like half the EP as well.”
Weisfield: “My influences are varied, I grew up with Green Day, Weezer, just a lot of those pop punk and early 2000s bands. But I’m into a lot of hardcore punk, I love the Descendents, Circle Jerks, Black Flag; I’m a big metal guy as you know as well, I play a lot of Slipknot, I grew up on Metallica, Anthrax, Black Sabbath, a lot of early thrash and just early metal in general, so all those different styles of music really influenced my playing on this record.”
The title of the EP, cover art, and first track truly show Straight Decline’s struggle of being college students while leading a different life of the informal, and sometimes unstable nature of being in a punk rock band. Each member is currently in the thick of their workload in their junior years, with Feichtel majoring in Chemical Engineering, Brady in Civil Engineering, and Weisfield double majoring in Economics and Jazz.
Feichtel: “David and I can both speak for that, we lived together last year. Actually it was me, David, and Rory all living in the same dorm, and that was like the biggest clash of like school life and band life, so definitely like a lot of that transferred into what we do now. A lot of that stress and kind of frustration, our band is kind of an outlet for that, especially in the first track as well.”
track 1: “There Are no mathematical jokes, only mathematical punchlines” (calculus song)
YouTube: Straight Decline – Topic
The EP opens with a fun, early pop punk song reminiscent of established bands in the genre like The Offspring, blink-182, and the Ramones, and was the first song the band had ever written and performed together.
Weisfield: “I remember Nate first sending me it, and he wasn’t even planning on it really being anything that we did, it was just like a fun exercise for trying to get better at writing, then I was like ‘Hey let’s play it, we kind of need to get some songs even if we don’t keep them,’ and it just stuck around.”
With big power chords, a hefty bass sound following the root notes, unrelenting drum fills, and comical lyrics, the average pop punker is sure to enjoy the songs catchiness and simplicity. Some notable moments in the song include Weisfield’s drumming at a fast tempo that keep it tight, and Svor’s harmonic counter melodies in the chorus that effortlessly put the rest of the instruments on the frontline, Svor later amps it up on the final chorus using more speedy chromatic sounding scales.
Svor: “It’s always fun for me to play, especially because a lot of the songs Nate writes just kind of have one guitar part, so I get like free rein to just write whatever I want over it. I have fun with that, writing counter melodies.”
The song is about the many relatable and stressful experiences college students have in their everyday lives, which is a pretty personal subject for the band as students themselves, with lyrics that detail the easy living of high school compared to the fiery hell of college courses with no in between. The opening verse says it best with the lyrics:
“One plus one, two plus four, that was super easy, what else is in store? Linear algebra gimme some more, let’s pick this up high school is a bore, the first day of class, I thought I’d fit, I look at the board and I don’t know sh*t, at the sheer sight my head had split, YOU’RE IN HONORS CALCULUS GET USED TO IT!” (0:00 – 0:20).
When it comes to crafting the two minute pop punk song and finding its meaning, here’s what primary songwriter Feichtel had to say: “I remember the exact day I started writing that song. I was a freshman, and I was talking to my one friend in German club, and we were talking about music and he was saying ‘You know, you should really start writing songs’ and I’m like ‘Yeah maybe, but like I was never really good at it, I tried a crack at it or two but like it just really never worked out’ and he was like ‘Well, maybe you need something to write about, like what can you think of right now?’ and I’m like ‘I have a lot of work to do in my Honors Variable Calc Class’ and he’s like ‘That’s what you’ve got to write about.’
So I went home, and then I just started coming up with the riff, and then I made the lyrics […] everything in that song is inspired by a certain class, it was Honors Math 0235. When I went into it, I thought it was going to be like Accelerated Calc One because that’s what every engineer needs to take in their first semester. But when I go to class the first day, it was Calc One and Two in the same class and I’m like ‘Oh my God I’m screwed.’
We had this awesome teacher, Dr. Leonard, I will always remember him, he was the kindest dude ever. Sometimes his lessons were sort of hard to follow along to because he would just go at like a thousand miles an hour, and the guy never had premade slides or anything, like he would just write stuff on the board and kept going from his own notes. Note taking was so hard in that class, I have like at least a notebook and a half of straight up line to line calculus formulas, and even the title of that track is something that he would say all the time.”
“Calculus Song” is not only an entertaining way to start the EP, but is also an exciting introduction to the band that sums up their current lives in a nutshell, or in this case, a two minute pop punk song. The song also ties the most into EP’s artwork of a calculus equation morphing into a shadowy demon that haunts a terrified student, illustrated by Melissa Way.
Feichtel: “I kind of told her my idea about it, I told her what name that we’re using and I just said ‘If you could put like some of my formula sheet equations in there that would be awesome.’ So I actually gave her, I think it was my final exam notes for intro to Chemmy and Thermo. So what she actually did was she traced my notes and that’s what you see in the cover, so those formulas literally are my handwriting, she traced it exactly how it was and put it in there.”
track 2: election day
YouTube: Straight Decline – Topic
As opposed to the first track, “Election Day” is on a more serious note, poking fun at conservative values while also expressing genuine worry for the future of America. The song clearly shows off punk music’s more rebellious side, and is in a similar style to other notable rebellious punk bands like Green Day and Bad Religion. Feichtel, however, didn’t just take influence from punk music, but also found unlikely inspiration that shaped the song’s core melody.
“For some reason, I thought about the song that- this is completely weird I don’t know why it stemmed from here, but I was thinking about Hotel Transylvania and the song that Dracula sings to Mavis at the beginning of the movie. I’m like ‘You know, I kind of like that progression,’ so I go back into my room and pick up my guitar and I just start trying to replicate those chords, and I’m like ‘This sounds like something I could write something to,’ and then those lyrics came just from my frustration of the results that day, and I think I wrote that song in about thirty minutes.”
The rest of the band clearly reciprocated well to the song’s initial idea, with more of Kaplan’s theatrical vocals and Weisfield’s tight transition fills. The band also shouts out Svor’s quick leads mimicking the vocal melody with a few extra notes to give them their own identity in the transition sections.
Weisfield: “I remember Nate showed it to me that night, and then I remember we brought it to the band. We started playing, and Brady out of nowhere just picks it up and immediately plays the guitar melody over top and it sounded great, and then I remember the one other thing that I really like about the song that I’m very proud of doing was at the end. You know how we have the hits? I remember we were playing around doing the outro and I was like ‘Let’s add those in, let’s see how it sounds’ and it added another layer to the song.”
Feichtel: “Brady’s addition on that was spectacular, it added a crazy difference. Also, Rory sang it a little bit different than I did in my original demo, I thought they brought some freaking heat into that. Kind of the way we do it is one of us makes a demo, everyone else listens to it, then we kind of add on top of each other, this was probably the song where the most addition had happened, and it was the song that turned out really good because of those additions.”
The song is powerful musically, and also very clever with lyrics that mock political controversies like “Give my voodoo doll to the one who wins, and give them full control over my body, take away my knowledge and our hopes and dreams, we can’t let our kids catch the gay, and let’s further the pursuit of the American dream, no more rights on Election Day” (0:51 – 1:06). “Election Day” makes each member’s voice heard, and it’s obvious that as long as there are problems in the world, Straight Decline will be there to write about them.
track 3: tomorrow
YouTube: Straight Decline – Topic
“Tomorrow” is the EP’s third track, and lead single released to the music world earlier this year in September, about a month prior to the full EP’s release. When asked why this song in particular was chosen as the first and only single, Weisfield said: “In my opinion, it is the best song that we ever made. I feel like that’s generally the consensus in the band. It’s definitely very different live than all of the other stuff we do. It is easily my favorite song, and it’s the favorite song for a lot of people.
I would definitely say with the first two tracks, those are pretty straightforward songs, there are definitely some pop punk influences that just keep the groove, keep fast, keep it going. ‘Tomorrow’ was really, I wouldn’t even say there was any specific music that really inspired me for it, just a lot of ‘try to do what feels right for the song’ because it was a very different vibe and I was trying to like follow the hits and feel of it.”
Musically, the song proved to be a challenge for the band as they stepped away from three chord punk songs into the intricacy and unconventional world of midwest emo, containing subtle elements of jazz and progressive rock. “Tomorrow’s” intro begins with beautiful and tear welling guitar work, perfect for getting in your feels like it’s the early 2000s again. The full band comes in with a twisted progression of eyebrow raising chord structures, chromatic leads, and intricate melodies mixed of emotional belts and operatic falsettos, all with just the right amount of cheesiness in the lyrics. The song’s primary composer, Svor, had this to say:
“It was kind of all over the place, I think it was summer break or something last year, I wrote it about my lovely girlfriend. I think the original riff that it started with is just from me jamming because that’s how I just come up with most of my songs. I’m just like playing something, I’ll record it, and I’m like ‘There are these cool aspects of this I’m going to take and put it into something else.’ I started off with that, and I just kind of harnessed the joy of being with my girlfriend, and put it into a song in a way…I don’t think we ended up changing much…I guess Rory ended up changing the vocals rhythmically, in the chorus especially, which added a little bit.”
Every album has their black sheep and “Tomorrow” is it for the Mid-Semester Crisis EP, but at the release’s halfway point where tracks generally tend to get buried, it still makes itself unforgettable to listeners’ ears as the band’s most popular tune with nearly two thousand streams on Spotify alone.
Feichtel: “That song helped me learn so many chords, thank you Brady.”
track 4: airwaves
YouTube: Straight Decline – Topic
In addition to the pop punk and emo world, Straight Decline make themselves known in the post hardcore sound with the EP’s fourth track, “Airwaves.” The song comes out of left field with lower sounding notes, fry screams, and overall more emotion. According to Feichtel, “It started as a riff, I was just sitting in my dorm the one night, and then I went into Drop D, and I’m just playing around seeing what sounds good and I hit that ‘Duh duh duh,’ and then I made the progression out of that.
Drop tunings on a guitar involve lowering the pitch of the top string by a whole step, allowing for quicker and easier chords and riffs in addition to a deeper heavier sound. Svor takes this to another level by tuning his guitar to Open C#, giving himself more options for notes that work more in favor of his style of lead playing.
Svor: “Drop D just confuses me and it’s more familiar. And I sometimes write other songs in open tunings, it allows me to write more tappy riffs, and it’s just as easy, you just play the whole thing and you’ve got a major chord…I feel like it’s easier to write riffs and counter melodies, but when it comes to solo-ing, it’s hard in that tuning and in the post hardcore style. So that was definitely difficult, but I got through it.”
As far as the song goes, the different rhythm feel from the intro into the quickness of the verses really jolt the song to life, and then leads back to the intro section with a heavy bridge before finishing it off with a final chorus. Weisfield, who remarkably matches the intensity of the song with his feral drumming, had this to say:
“This is very much a Rise Against inspired song I feel like. For me, the biggest thing was I really love what I was doing for drums on this, this is my favorite drum track because I have some very good fills in it that I really love playing. It’s definitely the one I go a bit crazy on with how I’m drumming and I love it.”
What’s most notable about this tune is that it’s first of two songs on the EP with fry screams, all done by Feichtel instead of lead vocalist Kaplan. When asked about his technique and how it came about for the band, he said:
“I’ve been developing it over the last couple of years, and I finally got to a point where I’m like actually confident with doing fry screams, I can definitely still improve on them, I don’t have complete satisfaction with them yet, but I think they turned out pretty good. I actually sing that entire song on the recording, only because like, number one, the subject matter is personal to me, I might as well do it. And it was also we were trying to get that song ready for a show, and I knew Rory wouldn’t be able to know it in time, so I’m like ‘I’ll just sing this one,’ and it ended up working out. It’s towards the top of my ranking, I don’t know if I could pick a favorite song but this one’s up there for me.”
When discussing the song’s meaning in the lyrics, Feichtel continues, “I pulled them from my relationship, my girlfriend and I had been dating for, at this point, four years. She goes to a different college than me, we were used to seeing each other all the time, we lived in the same town, went to the same school, I’d see her literally every day. And I had to go from seeing her every day to now I see her every couple of weeks. She only lives a couple of hours away but still, and especially when you’re a freshman or a sophomore and you don’t have a car, you can’t get there unless you really plan it out. So, that whole song I just wrote about how it’s hard to do long distance relationships, but it’s worth it if you really love each other, you can totally make it work out.”
track 5: The high and mighty
YouTube: Straight Decline – Topic
The fifth and final track, “The High and Mighty,” is the longest on the EP at nearly five full minutes, pulling out all the stops including more fry screams, even lower sounding notes, and continuing an all around unhinged post hardcore sound with every instrument working their hardest in each section, with Feichtel saying “I wanted to make it heavy, I wanted to make sure it just sounded like kind of a punch to the face.”
Feichtel returns to the microphone with Kaplan, and we hear both vocalists really push their last bit of energy in the track. The screams somehow feel louder, and Kaplan is at just the right spot in their vocal range, sounding like they’re ready to crack at any moment. This harsh and clean switch is what’s most impressive about this song, and fans of every other post hardcore band in the book like letlive, Thrice, and Silverstein will appreciate it as well.
The drums are super crisp, especially in the intro section’s build to kick everything off. Weisfield is still hard at work here as he has been with the other tracks, and follows his motto “hitting hard, hitting fast, kicking ass” every step of the way.
The chords are striking, and continue with the same drop tuning as “Airwaves,” keeping the music much more moodier, heavier, and absolutely deafening in the EP’s last moments. Let’s also not forget the middle breakdown section being as mean and disgusting as ever, and just has a way of shaking the floor you’re standing on every time you press play.
Straight Decline seems to like saving the best for last, because in addition to closing the EP, the band fittingly chooses this song to close each of their live shows, and leaves listeners and audiences with a powerful final message.
Feichtel: “I wrote it about people complaining way too damn much. I kind of wrote it about me, other people I know, I wrote it about a lot of stuff. There are people who complain about the smallest things, and I do the same thing, but in the end it doesn’t matter.
In the end, there are people who actually have struggles, like people who are living in war torn countries literally fighting to survive every day, you can’t compare those struggles, you don’t know the things other people are going through, it could be some mental health struggle or fighting some physical ailment, anything like that. There are things you can just step up and get out of, there are other things you can’t, and in the end it’s like no matter what struggles we have, we should always band together because the way that we can overcome those struggles is by helping each other.”
With 2025 wrapping up, Straight Decline have big plans for 2026 with more shows, starting with a currently unannounced show at Pittsburgh’s The New Low in January, as well as the goal to release a full length album before each member graduates college, which would truly signify the end of the Mid-Semester Crisis era. Beyond that, Feichtel promises “There’s always more when it comes to Straight Decline,” but until then, keep listening to Straight Decline’s Mid-Semester Crisis EP wherever you listen to music, or directly support the band by purchasing a CD from a member!
Sources
“Airwaves” YouTube, uploaded by Straight Decline – Topic, 16 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N8oFEZZtyxE&list=RDN8oFEZZtyxE&start_radio=1
“Election Day” YouTube, uploaded by Straight Decline – Topic, 16 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0jSty8FruA0&list=RD0jSty8FruA0&start_radio=1
Straight Decline [@straightdecline]. Album cover. Instagram, illustrated by Melissa Way [@melzika_03], 22 Sept. 2025, https://www.instagram.com/p/DO4_N4cjVSb/
“The High and Mighty” YouTube, uploaded by Straight Decline – Topic, 16 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5mVN_QC990&list=RDc5mVN_QC990&start_radio=1
“’There Are No Mathematical Jokes, Only Mathematical Punchlines’ (Calculus Song)” YouTube, uploaded by Straight Decline – Topic, 16 Oct. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0olWvb9Jhi4&list=RD0olWvb9Jhi4&start_radio=1
“Tomorrow” YouTube, uploaded by Straight Decline – Topic, 21 Sept. 2025, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeeHZU63adw&list=RDzeeHZU63adw&start_radio=1
