Okay sure, it's an old topic, but near as I could tell it'll only be bad if the people discussed ever improved. Otherwise I'm pressed for ideas and I'm gonna be busy with school near the end of the month, so how about a trip down memory lane?
Cover bands can either be the best thing ever, or the most hilarious thing ever. I won't bite the heads of anyone who just does these for fun, but if you're intending to become famous for it... I dunno, don't suck I guess?
Such was the way of a two piece outfit who were prominent in the early-2010s, but either they took a hint or grew up a few years after. I'm gonna try and piece together a cohesive piece on prime shit-meisters Bad Departure.
Background
Bad Departure, earlier known as Point Blank Tunes and Nuclear Vengeance, was a three-piece band from America's favorite punching bag New Jersey, said to be Tom's River. Max Branvall and Cody Fox, the latter of which seemed to be the lead mastermind behind all this were principal members. They had a drummer too, about two to three of them, like he got sick of either their shit or ensuing bullying.
Their identities varied, but kept a certain motif, playing covers of songs by Green Day and Blink-182. I mean I heard of fangirls, but cover leeches are new. Now sure, covers are never better than the original, but here... how do I put this? They suck harder than the most manufactured pop artists out there and at least then they're built for success. They make me wanna pledge my undying love to Fred Durst and Chad Kroeger. They had three chances to improve and they never did.
Everything that could go wrong, did. Singing is off key, tempos are inconsistent, drumming isn't in tune with the guitars, bass and guitar are inconsistent, plus Green Day.
It gets worse once you take into account they wanted to get noticed. They had to hop between three different channels of differing names, only reason I know of was to bury the lead, but word to the wise, don't announce this on your channel, thanks to that I was able to uncover a more obscure second channel.
One other takeaway I noticed was that for such a small outfit in New Jersey, they somehow got access to some bitching equipment, Marshall Amps, those guitars and some other stuff I didn't notice. Either these are a bunch of privileged rich white kids or they drove their parents into debt and are forced to make music in order to make their money back.
Only way they could be worse is if they were ghosted by a Nigerian who makes anything creepy just by being there, but he prefers girls I guess, lest the boys wasted all their money in equipment and couldn't afford the entry fee, or maybe just the fact both operate on separate edges of the US.
Chronological Stuff
Okay, nothing more to note in general, so I'm gonna go over the history of these wackos for the hell of it.
Part 1: Point Blank Tunes
They made their debut as PointBlankTunes in May 31st of 2012. It seems they were set on getting famous at this point, at least to my best guess as the Wayback Machine put out zilch implying otherwise. Their first upload was only nine days after they made the channel. On here, we have two live performances, a pre-recorded cover and a pink slip.
The two live performances were shot in either Branvall's or Fox's backyard, the drummer probably pissed off Cody so they squirreled him away into a shed to only moderate visibility. They play to an audience consisting of their parents and family members I believe, some of which slowly getting eaten away by the fact they wasted their money on what amounted to nothing, lest they knew nothing of their intent beyond it being some post 4th backyard concert.
I noticed they not only tried to cover the songs, but to get them as close to the originals as humanly possible. It's the little things, but they also tried to recreate Billie Joe Armstrong's freestyle rant at the start of a performance of She. Notable thing here is that while the bass tone is right, Branvall's guitar is in the wrong tune and they do nothing to correct it.
Perhaps under threat of violence for butchering the name of Armstrong, they were forced to remain in their rooms, but made time to do ruin the name of Blink-182. They recorded separately, the drummer wanted to get revenge for his shed placement and just did his own thing, only to forget about in some areas.
Basically, it sounds like they recorded everything separately, and shat themselves when trying to make it cohesive. It was so embarrassing, they pulled a BenTheLooney and moved to a new channel, but unlike Ben, were a bit more honest about it, I mean Ben is a hell of a lot more honest these days, but that's beside the point.
Part 2: Nuclear Vengeance
If it hadn't been for that announcement video, this channel would've completely slipped under the radar. It seems around this point they tried to put their music on Reverb Nation, or just made the account, what reason would they have to remove the music if the account implied anything went on there. But I'll discuss other profiles later on.
There isn't much here, beyond an accoustic cover of a Green Day song and a full-band cover of a Blink-182 song. There is one thing I noticed. Around this time they claimed they'd be making more original music, but it never happened beyond a snipe that played at the start of the last video on the channel. I can see why they gave up, it proved to be too generic even for them.
It seems they discovered that when they link to a new channel from their own, the hate travels with it, so quietly launched...
Part 3: Bad Departure
Their most notable phase, or so it would seem. They resumed their usual schtick of cover songs, only improvement being that they did another Blink-182 cover that was mostly on time, even though the guitar ascension was total ass.
Once more, the drummer changed every phase or so, like they think "Fuck this." And leave when the timing is right. It seems their ambitions clouded their better judgement, as at this point, they did a live gig, albeit somewhere small. The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, big to locals, but otherwise a small blip on a giant radar.
It must've been slow that day.
After that, possibly due to an unseen beatdown, they went into hiding, and it seemed like a fitting end to the band, until...
Part 4: Good for Nothing Music
The band made one last rebranding attempt, but this one was far more elusive. Nothing much exists on this band aside from an Instagram account with the latest post coming from 2014. Facebook provides nothing much either and due to the generic name, any info I could find will be inconclusive.
Based on the names listed, it seems Cody Fox left the band at some point and Max Branvall was the last one involved. The Instagram users listed on the band's description lead to either empty or dead profiles, but at least one member in their videos looks like Max, I guess.
Web Fingerprints
Of the profiles I could find, whether they be abandoned pages or indications, they were active on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, ReverbNation, SoundCloud and Wix. They never had a Twitter account, but given how shitty that site is it wouldn't take long for them to jump ship.
The oldest profile they have as of now is their Point Blank channel, every YouTube channel they made had an associated Facebook page, and those pages would typically get shut down every time they changed names, probably for security reasons. No surviving Facebook profile exists for this band.
It wasn't till around their Nuclear Vengeance days where they branched out to ReverbNation, probably to take advantage of making their own songs, but nothing came of it and they never tried it again when they became Bad Departure, although they did make a SoundCloud account when they moved to their third channel, maybe that's why.
They made an Instagram account later down the line, as with for Good for Nothing Music, but nothing came of them beyond a few scant posts, one of which being a promotion for their Stone Pony concert. Had it not been for this I would've never known they made a fourth attempt.
Lastly they have a Wix site, which seemed to have come close to the end as there're only a scant few updates. Only thing interesting is a proposal for new songs which never happened, another cover advertisement, and a promotion for their Stone Pony show. I just brought it up here because I'm a completionist.
Closing thoughts
Follow your dreams, but work at being good at accomplishing them. If this was intended to be a joke it has less mileage than Weird Al Yankovic, because this is just the same joke over and over if so, or an excuse to avoid having this be a cloud forever hanging over their heads.
Got nothing else to say, and it may be a while before I post anything else, so I'll end cringe style.
They
Shock me to silence
Shrivel my face up into such pain
They
They figured out
How to make Ashlee Simpson feel less ashamed
Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?
Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?
Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.
Now take this heed, and screw you.
They
Haunt all the senses
Of hearing sight and sound no rules apply
I
Want to point out
Originality would just make things much worse
Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?
Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?
Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.
Now take this heed, and screw you.
(annoyed grunt)
Why'd you ever turn to Green Day and Blink-182?
Why do privileged white boys always the worst of use?
Scream or ease, my ears always bleed.
Now take this heed, and screw you.
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