Walter Schreifels' post-Quicksand band Rival Schools' classic 2001 debut album United by Fate turned 20 last year, and now the album is getting a 20th anniversary deluxe reissue via Run For Cover. The standard edition/digital edition arrives October 28, and the deluxe/collectors editions arrive in time for Record Store Day Black Friday (11/25). The deluxe edition includes the original album remastered for vinyl, plus every official United by Fate B-side (including "On Vacations" from Atticus: ...Dragging the Lake), the songs from their split with Onelinedrawing, and a newly-recorded acoustic version of "Holding Sand," which they just released today. It's a lovely re-imagining of a classic song, and you can check it out below. The collectors edition "is housed in a hard-cover linen case with stamped lettering, holding a hardcover sixty-four page book that includes handwritten lyrics and never-before-seen photos from the band’s personal archives."
We've teamed with the band on an exclusive teal vinyl pressing of the standard edition, and you can pre-order yours now while they last. Here's a mock-up:
Here's what we said about United by Fate in our list of the best emo albums of 2001:
Emo as we know it wouldn't exist without Walter Schreifels, who helped pioneer the genre's melodic hardcore side with Gorilla Biscuits (directly inspiring Saves The Day, New Found Glory, Fall Out Boy, and more) and then did the same for the darker post-hardcore side with Quicksand (inspiring Thursday, Glassjaw, Box Car Racer, and more). Those bands qualify more as proto-emo than as emo proper, but in 2001, as the genre was experiencing its biggest boom yet, Walter's then-new band Rival Schools released an album that positioned him as a peer of the newly-popular artists he himself inspired, and it fit right in with the emo of the era. United by Fate was Walter's most melodic album yet, leaning even more heavily into the shoegaze, Britpop, grunge, and indie rock influences that poked their heads through in Quicksand's music. Those became increasingly common ingredients in emo, and that's thanks in large part to Walter's influence. As he was in the '80s and '90s, Rival Schools established Walter as a trailblazer in the 21st century too. The album's split between emo-punk bangers ("Travel By Telephone"), sprawling slow-burners ("Undercovers On"), adventurous post-hardcore ("Used For Glue"), power pop ("My Echo"), and more, and Rival Schools go full acid psych-rock freakout on album closer "Hooligans For Life," which almost nobody in the emo/post-hardcore realm was doing at the time. United by Fate pushed the genre's envelope, and it contained some of the best songs Walter Schreifels ever wrote.
In the reissue's new Jonah Bayer-penned bio, Walter also reflected on the impact that the album had on the then-booming emo scene: "We went on tour in the U.S. and we brought out bands like Taking Back Sunday or Dashboard Confessional, and Rival Schools really connected with people who might have been a little too young to see Quicksand," he said. That said, United by Fate never got as popular in the US as it did in other countries, and Walter added, "I wish we had that push in the United States because I think United By Fate could have been a more popular record. Because of when it came out and the context of the time, it got overlooked in a way, but on Instagram I get a lot of feedback from people and it’s obvious to me that the record had more potential. That happens to tons of records. I’m just really happy for this opportunity for people to give it another listen."
Listen to the new acoustic version of "Holding Sand" below and pick up our new teal vinyl variant here.