Asking Alexandria

Spanning two continents, three names, and nearly a dozen members, stalwart British metalcore enthusiasts Asking Alexandria are a band whose career seems to be more about change than anything else. Emerging in the late 2000s and led by founder and guitarist Ben Bruce, they caught fire in 2013 with the release of their chart-scorching third LP From Death to Destiny. Subsequent outings like The Black (2016), Like a House on Fire (2020), and See What's on the Inside (2021) saw the group adding elements of nu-metal and traditional hard rock to their demonic blend of electro-screamo and uncompromising post-hardcore.
The brainchild of guitarist Ben Bruce, the band was originally formed in Dubai in 2003 under the name Amongst Us, which soon changed to End of Reason before they eventually settled on Asking Alexandria in 2006. They cemented the name change with their self-released EP Tomorrow.Hope.Goodbye. The following year, they issued their first full-length album, The Irony of Your Perfection, through Hangmans Joke.
Shortly afterward, Bruce left Dubai and returned to England, resulting in the dissolution of the band. In 2008, he formed a new group around the name Asking Alexandria. Unlike its vaguely post-hardcore predecessor, this incarnation was a pretty standard screamo/metalcore act, with chugging guitars and alternating singing/screaming vocals. Finally settling on the lineup of Danny Worsnop (vocals), Camron Liddell (guitar), James Cassells (drums), and Sam Bettley (bass), the band set to work on a touring blitz of the United States with groups like Alesana, the Bled, and Evergreen Terrace. In 2009, Asking Alexandria signed with Sumerian Records and released their first album with the new lineup, Stand Up and Scream, in the fall of that year. They followed their debut with the Life Gone Wild EP, which included remixes of songs from Stand Up and Scream and a few Skid Row covers.
Asking Alexandria would find mainstream success in 2011 with the release of the remix album Stepped Up and Scratched, which featured EDM remixes of songs from their debut as well as their sophomore album, Reckless & Relentless, which was released a few months later. Reckless peaked at number nine on the Billboard charts and the band continued with relentless touring into the next year. At the end of 2012, Worsnop tore a vocal cord, an injury that would prove consequential years later. The group returned in the summer of 2013 with a more mature hard rock sound, smoothing off some of the metalcore and electronicore influences, resulting in their more focused third album, From Death to Destiny.
At the end of the tour cycle, in January 2015, Worsnop announced that he was parting ways with the band to focus on a more traditional rock & roll sound with his group We Are Harlot. Asking Alexandria recruited a new singer, Ukrainian metalcore vocalist Denis Stoff (Make Me Famous), and immediately released the new lineup’s first single, “I Won’t Give In.” That song would appear on their album The Black, which was released a year later in March 2016. That October, Stoff split with the band.
Worsnop — in the midst of his own solo endeavors — rejoined Asking Alexandria just in time for the group’s ten-year anniversary. The reunited band returned to the studio to record their fifth album, which featured the lead single “Into the Fire.” The eponymous Asking Alexandria, which adopted a more stadium-rock-friendly style of metalcore, arrived in late 2017 and debuted in the Top 30 of the Billboard 200. After a quick promotional cycle, the reunited and newly sober band returned to the studio for album number six. The first offering from that effort, “The Violence,” arrived in July 2019; the LP itself, Like a House on Fire, followed in 2020. Early 2021 saw the arrival of the single “Alone Again” ahead of the release of the group’s new studio effort, See What's on the Inside, which arrived later that October. ~ Gregory Heaney & Neil Z. Yeung