New Found Glory Take Us Inside The Making Of 'LISTEN UP!'

As New Found Glory gear up to celebrate nearly three decades of pop-punk greatness, their 11th studio album Listen Up! has arrived this weekend as both a celebration and a statement of resilience.

The record captures a band still pushing forward – creatively, emotionally and personally – shaped by guitarist Chad Gilbert’s ongoing cancer battle and a renewed focus on the connection between band, music and community.

New Found Glory – ‘A Love Song’

Now, drummer Cyrus Bolooki is giving us an exclusive peek behind the scenes of how Listen Up! actually came together – from recording curveballs to surprise collaborators, emotional studio sessions and one very wholesome star-studded gang-vocal party.

Here’s what really went down while New Found Glory made one of the most meaningful records of their career….

Recording Started Earlier Than Ever – And Cyrus Finally Got More Time With The Songs

New Found Glory always do pre-production – but this time they changed the entire approach.

Instead of rehearsing in a practice space or working remotely, the band set up directly in the recording studio with Cyrus’ drum kit fully mic’d and ready. They’d workshop songs during the day – then he’d track them that same night.

For Cyrus, that was a big deal….

Cyrus Bolooki: “For our records, we always do some type of pre-production. For those of you who don’t know, that’s just basically getting together before you hit record so that you know what you’re doing.

Back in the day you did pre-production so the record label would not waste money in the studio and you wouldn’t spend a year having them pay for studio time. Nowadays for us, it’s just to make sure we’re ready so that, again, we’re not wasting the money, or maybe a record label…or both of us! But the pre-production for this record was a little different than before.

Normally, pre-production would be in a rehearsal studio or maybe at Chad’s [Chad Gilbert] house, or sometimes it’s even done remotely or on the road. We were in the actual studio, my drums were set up the way they were for recording, and we went through songs, and then I would record them that night. It was kind of neat for me because a lot of times, and this is maybe a little selfish on my part, or at least it’s very personal to me…but drums for us always go first. So I always have the least amount of time to live with songs, and that’s good and bad.

And sometimes I think I do better, let’s say we’re spending a few hours on a song: I kind of get into that song and then I’m in that mindset, I just want to get it done. And then I can flush it out of my mind and go to the next song. Then I figure out after we’re done with the record, I go back to what I was doing and figure it back out.

This time around, it was kind of cool to do the recording a little bit differently in that way.”

New Found Glory "Laugh It Off" Official Music Video

Chad’s Health Battle Changed The Recording Process – And The Band Leaned On Their Friends

One of the most emotional realities of making Listen Up! was guitarist Chad Gilbert’s health.

During recording, his cancer treatment took a heavy physical toll – to the point where some days simply being present in the studio was incredibly difficult.

Enter Dan O’Connor from Four Year Strong...

Cyrus Bolooki: “Something else that happened on this record that hasn’t really happened before with New Found Glory, and this isn’t necessarily the most awesome of stories, but it is very true and realistic.

Dan O’Connor, the guitar player for Four Year Strong, he’s been touring with us for quite a few years now, playing all different roles of guitar player, whether rhythm supporting Chad, or a lot of times when Chad can’t physically be present, Dan has taken over Chad’s role on stage. He was there, not just because he’s an awesome dude and he’s our friend, he was there as somewhat of a guitar support, if you want to call it that.

This wasn’t something that we planned on, and it wasn’t something we expected to have happen. But at the time we were recording, Chad’s health was really not good. And what it really was, it was a treatment that he had been put on. His treatments are constantly changing, it’s a cancer battle and there’s no real right way to do it. The treatment he was taking at the time, or just before we went in to record, really did a number on him.

There were multiple times and days, and especially towards the end of the process, when he physically was having trouble just being there, playing…just anything. I can only imagine what he was really going through. And Dan was actually able to come in and play some of the stuff.

What would happen is, Chad would be playing something and then maybe he would hand the guitar to Dan and say, “can you play this?”. In that sense we were able to lean on Dan for some of these things, and you don’t have to worry because Dan’s amazing, he’s such a proficient player. And not only does it sound like Chad, or sound like us and it works; he got it done.

What we were worried about in the back of our minds, obviously first and foremost is Chad’s health. But secondly, you only have so much studio time and we really only had a small window before we needed to either go to the next thing, whatever tour or show, or possibly we’re going to miss out on being able to release this vinyl-wise. It was a little stressful, but we got it done as a result.”

Bringing Back A Pop-Punk Legend To Mix The Album

If Listen Up! sounds massive – that’s not an accident.

The album was mixed by Neil Avron – a foundational figure in New Found Glory history who worked on their self-titled breakout, Sticks And Stones and Catalyst...

Cyrus Bolooki: “A lot of people don’t realise that the person who mixed this album is Neil Avron. Neil Avron is New Found royalty, he produced, recorded, engineered and mixed our first big record, our self-titled record. He also produced and recorded our Sticks and Stones and Catalyst records. He’s very much a big part of our success, and bringing him on board to mix this album really gave us confidence.

We were basically able to know that no matter what we did, we could give it to Neil and it would sound huge, because Neil is the sound of rock radio. This guy has gone from us to Fall Out Boy, Yellowcard and then it goes on to bands like Linkin Park and Twenty One Pilots as well. This guy, he does everything. He knows what he’s doing.

He said he quite enjoyed doing this record, I think it was fun for him to work with us again in that capacity. It was cool because there was a little bit of uncertainty also on this record. I mean there always is, you write songs and you’re like, “are these good or are people going to like them? I know we like them”. But then again we were also coming off an acoustic record, and hadn’t done a record since Forever + Ever x Infinity at this time, I guess it was five years prior: is this still going to sound good? And Neil was able to do that.

We also had Steve Evetts producing, we’d worked with him on From the Screen to Your Stereo record, he mixed that record. Then he produced Forever + Ever x Infinity. So we’ve also worked with him before, we have a great rapport. Everybody was able to just relax in that sense.

And however kind of tense or stressful some of the studio sessions were, a lot of it obviously because of Chad’s health and the worry around that, all the rest of the stuff, the stuff that should have really been stressful, like: “am I nailing this take or do I still have what it takes to play?”…we weren’t worried about it because we had people that really know us, love us, and understand us right there to support us.

We’re very, very fortunate to have these great people around us, and this great team that worked on this record. I mentioned Dan from Four Year Strong and what we’ve been able to do live. Dan has been playing with us for quite a few years now. Of late, we’ve also been able to bring a supporting cast that is awesome.

In Australia, We had Will [Pugh] from Cartel play with us, he’s played with us before as well. We had Ryan Key from Yellowcard who’s in your great country right now, he’s been on stage with us too. We’ve had Kevin [Skaff] from A Day To Remember too. We’ve just had so many good people on stage with us. And there’s also Dave [Knox] from the band Real Friends, he’s been with us quite a bit as well. We’ve had so many great people that are always willing to step up and want to help us out. And they enjoy playing as well.”

A Star-Studded Mate-Fest Recording Session

One of the most special moments of recording Listen Up! came during gang vocal tracking day – a long-standing New Found Glory tradition where friends pile into the studio to sing, shout and celebrate the record together.

This time, that crowd included a seriously stacked lineup of guests – including Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional), Anthony Raneri (Bayside), members of Strongarm and members of the band’s own crew.

The moment felt so meaningful that the group skipped a traditional band photoshoot entirely and used a snapshot from that day in the album booklet instead.

According to Cyrus, it perfectly captured where the band is now – surrounded by friends, community and shared history…

Cyrus Bolooki: “An extra little Easter egg for this record is: when people get this album and they look at, hopefully the album artwork, I don’t know with streaming if it’s going to work for you. But if you get the vinyl or the CD, there is a picture on the back of the booklet.

We always have a picture of the band somewhere in the booklet, but this is not just any photo of a band, there’s quite a few people in this picture. That was taken on the day that we recorded all of the group vocals for this album.

In that picture you will see tons of our friends, obviously us in the band, but also Steve Evetts is on the right side of this picture, the producer. Then we also have, just to name a couple: Chris Carrabba from Dashboard Confessional there, Anthony Raneri from Bayside, we have members from Strongarm, we have Josh, our merch guy, Stevie, another one of our merch guys too.

Not pictured is somebody who’s in your beautiful country right now: Josh Portman from Yellowcard was there, but he had to leave to go to a Pearl Jam concert that night, so he missed the picture. We took that picture and we were like, “we don’t need to go and do a separate photo session of the band. This is perfect. This totally sums up where we are in our band with this record”.

We have our friends and we hang out with our friends and we wanted this record to be a celebration of that. We always, at least on the last couple of records, will have that gang vocal day. And it’s so fun when everybody comes to the studio, you’re usually most of the way through the record and you just fly through a lot of the songs. You play a bunch of them for your friends and you’re like, “oh hey, scream this one part,” or, “hey, can you sing, do this one part?”.

That was so fun that day. I’ll always remember that day and I’m glad we archived it and then threw it on the record for everybody to see.”

A Record Built On Gratitude, Resilience And Friendship

As New Found Glory approach their 30th anniversary, Listen Up! stands as more than just another album – it’s a document of perseverance, collaboration and appreciation for the people around them.

Behind the riffs and hooks is a band navigating real life – health scares, creative pressure, uncertainty – and choosing connection and positivity anyway.

Get it into your ears here.