Eyeball Records subtly shaped the sound of the early 2000s. Founded by Alex Saavedra and Vincent Li, the indie label began in 1995, run out of an apartment on 14th Street in NYC. It quickly became an early champion for burgeoning New Jersey talent like Thursday and My Chemical Romance, as well as the eclectic punk of Little Joe Gould, who’d later change their name to Murder by Death. The label continued to endure, traveling into the next couple of decades to house the new generation of cutting-edge artists, from GothBoiClique and blackwinterwells to N8NOFACE. Today, it’s still recognized as a rich source of underground music, particularly by putting out limited runs of cassettes. That being said, we asked our readers to name the best Eyeball Records bands, and they leaned hard into obvious favorites, as well as deep cuts. Find the top fan picks ranked below.
Read more: Every My Chemical Romance album ranked
5. The Number Twelve Looks Like You
The Number Twelve Looks Like You threw themselves into dark, chaotic mathcore that pulls from screamo, hardcore, and jazz (think the Dillinger Escape Plan mixed with Mahavishnu Orchestra), which caught the attention of Eyeball Records in 2004. The band released several projects through the label, most significantly 2005’s Nuclear. Sad. Nuclear and 2007’s Mongrel, until they went on hiatus in 2010. Though no longer with Eyeball, the Number Twelve Looks Like You reunited with a secret show in 2016 and are actively working on new music, putting out a single last spring. Their influence also continues to run deep, heard in several new-gen bands, including the Armed and the Callous Daoboys (the latter of whom discovered the NJ greats on a sampler CD that came with MCR’s Bullets).
4. Midtown
Before they were called up to the majors, Midtown rereleased their debut EP, 1999’s The Sacrifice of Life, on Eyeball Records. Back then, their sound was harder and darker, taking cues from the Get Up Kids and the Promise Ring before fully leaning into bouncy pop punk. The band quickly followed it up with a trio of exceedingly catchy albums — Save the World, Lose the Girl, Living Well Is the Best Revenge, and Forget What You Know — before breaking up in 2005, though they’ve regrouped several times. That included opening for their NJ peers My Chemical Romance during their 2022 reunion tour and playing their own headlining hometown show at Starland Ballroom that same year.
3. Pencey Prep
Frank Iero has been in countless bands in the New Jersey underground, from Sector 12 to Pencey Prep, which turned into I Am A Graveyard. Before he got recruited to play in My Chemical Romance, though, Iero was the scrappy frontman for Pencey. “[Alex Saavedra came] to my mom’s house, where Pencey were practicing in the basement,” Iero told AP in 2020. “I don’t think we blew him away musically, but he saw how dedicated we were and how serious we were about it. That was endearing to him, and I think he wanted to give us a shot, so he signed Pencey and decided to put a record out.” From there, they released 2001’s Heartbreak in Stereo and booked a tour, though the band essentially ended when they got home.
2. Thursday
Back in 1999, Thursday signed with Eyeball Records and put out their debut LP, Waiting. Produced by Sal Villanueva, it was an explosion of post-hardcore fury, alt-rock smarts, and literary storytelling that reflected the basement shows that Geoff Rickly put on in New Brunswick. “We’d have these wild shows with Rainer Maria and Converge on the same bill,” he said in an interview with Noisey. “What I was into was the community around underground music. I wanted to put something social together that had its roots in hardcore, but was more tied to the culture and aesthetic of DIY hardcore than the sound of it.” Though its follow-up, 2001’s Full Collapse, is the better-known record, Waiting built its foundation, going on to be reissued many times.
1. My Chemical Romance
Without Eyeball Records giving My Chemical Romance a chance, their trajectory may look very different. After being discovered by Rickly, he took the helm on 2002’s I Brought You My Bullets, You Brought Me Your Love, encompassing songs that teased where they were headed. Their storytelling chops, full of anxiety, depression, and disillusionment, were directly inspired by 9/11 (“Skylines and Turnstiles,” “Headfirst for Halos”), soon leading to a major-label deal with Reprise. “When we wrote our first record, we were a band for about three months,” Gerard Way said in 2004, in his first-ever interview with AP. “We just really wanted to be a touring live band. That was the goal. The way the band operate is that we always like to come in under the radar… We just don’t like to talk about things — we like to do them.”