How to start a rock band when the algorithm says don’t
Starting and keeping a rock band together feels almost reckless. Streaming platforms reward solo bedroom projects. Tours are expensive. Listeners swipe past songs in seconds. And yet, every so often, a group decides the work is worth the risk. University Drive is one of those bands. But they didn’t begin as one.
Back in 2016, University Drive was just Edward Cuozzo, writing and recording largely alone. It could have stayed that way — safer, cheaper, and perfectly suited to the algorithm’s appetite for quick, self-contained releases. Instead, Cuozzo kept pulling in collaborators, letting the project swell and shrink until, after a national tour with Cold in 2022, the current line-up locked into place: Angelo Maruzzelli, Ryan Grutt, Tony Kruszka and Mark Naples.
That line-up changed more than just the sound. For the first time, every member shaped their own parts. The songs on First Stage Separation are the product of shared authorship, with ideas bouncing in real time and arrangements evolving in the room. The EP’s recording — live to tape at Electrical Audio in Chicago, with Greg Norman — was less about chasing a vintage aesthetic and more about capturing proof of what they’d become. It’s the same room, and the same ethos, that the late Steve Albini built his career on: no tricks, no safety nets, no fixing it later.
What they brought home is a record that refuses to separate performance from recording. You can hear the push and pull of musicians reacting to each other in real time, the imperfections that make a take worth keeping. For a band in 2025, that’s not just nostalgia — it’s a statement.
University Drive’s path wasn’t the efficient one, but First Stage Separation makes a case for why bands still matter. In a landscape built for singles and self-containment, they’ve doubled down on collective sound, on the chemistry you can’t fake, on music made to be played together. That choice may be harder, but in the right room, with the right people, it can be the thing that keeps rock alive.