15 Savage Scene Diss Tracks and the Feuds They Were About

Brand New vs Taking Back Sunday: This clash of noughties emo titans is the greatest scene beef to ever result in diss tracks. There’s mixed reports about what exactly went down between Brand New and Taking Back Sunday, but the story seems to go something like this: Jesse Lacey, Brand New’s frontman, and John Nolan, guitarist for Taking Back Sunday, were friends before their respective bands took off. Then, the two fell out over a girl––of course they did, this is the emo scene we’re talking about––and took aim at each other via song. Lacey took the first swipe, fantasizing about a person who’s done him wrong, likely Nolan, going “through the windshield” on Brand New’s “Seventy Times Seven." Savage.

Nolan, however, bit back on “There’s No ‘I’ In Team,” as he and vocalist Adam Lazarra spout “best friends means I’ll pull the trigger / Best friends means you’ll get what you deserve.” Like "Seventy Times Seven," it's disturbingly violent stuff. Brand New’s song “Mix Tape” and TBS’ “Timberwolves at New Jersey” are also implicated in this fall out, and things even stretched to the merch table, both bands taking swings at each other via shirts before eventually reconciling.

Rise Records loved stoking a bit of drama amongst their bands, something to which the feud between Woe, Is Me and Issues attests. After Tyler Carter and Michael Bohn left Woe, Is Me and went on to form Issues, both bands took swipes back and forth, even releasing diss tracks on the same day via the same label (Rise imprint Velocity Records). “I've Told You Once” was Woe, Is Me's effort.

Returning some Rise Records fire, Issues responded to Woe, Is Me's gripes with "King of Amarillo." Thankfully, those involved seem to have grown up somewhat since, and Tyler Carter would later apologize to Woe, Is Me on behalf of Issues for “dissing on them to kick-start our career” in an interview with MindEqualsBlown.

 Austin Carlile has regularly been at the center of scene drama, and this feud between Of Mice & Men and his previous outfit Attack Attack! was one of the most high-profile. Given the vitriolic nature of their statements released after Carlile’s departure from the band, the rest of Attack Attack! seemed to despise him by the time their relationship came to an end, a sentiment that was only furthered when they released “AC-130,” which ends with the band declaring that “you’re better off dead.”

Austin Carlile decided to shoot back at Attack Attack! with a diss track of his own, “OHIOISONFIRE,” so it's safe to say the feeling between the two parties was mutual. Further evidence of Carlile's disdain for his former colleagues can be found in the lyrics of "OHIOISONFIRE," the Of Mice & Men frontman declaring, "You think you know about me / Well I think you're nothing, false words fall dead / I won't pretend, I wish you were dead."

The first Attila “Callout” song is definitely the superior of the two, but on both "Callout" and "Callout 2" vocalist Fronz doesn’t hold anything back, taking on everyone from Danny Worsnop to Harvey Weinstein. There’s some scene comedy gold in the original “Callout,” as Attila poke fun at Jonny Craig’s infamous Macbook scandal (“Hey kids, give me all your fucking money / Got a hundred Macbooks and I swear I'm not a druggie”), as well as Ronnie Radke’s checkered history with mic stands (“Even Ronnie Radke talks shit on my Instagram / Give me your address so I can hit you with a mic stand”). Christofer Drew, the Westboro Baptist Church, Tim Lambesis, Logan Paul and, erm, condoms also take a hit across Attila's bonkers pair of diss tracks.

Yet another legendary scene beef here, this time courtesy of Ronnie Radke and co. After Radke was kicked-out of Escape the Fate following his incarceration in 2008, Blessthefall’s Craig Mabbitt stepped in to take his place. Mabbitt helped to pen one of ETF’s first post-Radke songs, “The Flood,” which features a vocal refrain of “I’m leaving you behind,” words that it’s been speculated are about Radke. It was Ronnie Radke, however, who’d have the last laugh.

"I'm baaaaaaack!" Hitting hard with the Falling in Reverse song “Tragic Magic”––“You're such a dumb fuck / You need to shut up / You bring a picture of me every time you get a haircut,” he sings about Craig Mabbitt––Ronnie Radke would go on to surpass the achievements of his former band, with Falling in Reverse now one of the biggest bands in the scene. Following multiple tours together, it appears that in 2020 Radke and Escape the Fate are on amicable terms.

An angry Bert McCracken is a man not to be messed with. Case in point: “Pretty Handsome Awkward” is a biting attack on an individual who’s done wrong. It’s been widely speculated that McCracken wrote the song about My Chemical Romance’s Gerard Way following a fall-out between the two, something the Used’s frontman denied for a long time before eventually admitting it to be true. It’s been heavily rumored that the Used will open for some of MCR’s reunion shows this year, and despite McCracken teasing this to be the case, there’s been no official word from the My Chem camp as of yet.

One of punk heroes Against Me!’s biggest hits, “I Was a Teenage Anarchist” is considered a modern punk classic by many, but not Tim McIlrath. Rise Against’s frontman took issue with the anti-revolution tone of Against Me!’s song, responding with “Architects,” which borrows from the AM! track and states, “Don't you remember when you were young and you wanted to set the world on fire? Well I still am, and I still do!" Laura Jane Grace wasn’t entertaining McIlrath’s rebuttal, however, responding to the call-out in an interview with neostarpromotions:

“I think that the song was misinterpreted by both Tim and a lot of people… I guess I don’t really understand Rise Against’s politics or I don’t understand the statement that ‘The revolution was a lie’, seems to, for a lot of people, put them really up in arms. I always feel like asking the question, ‘Well how the fuck wasn’t it? Where’s the revolution, man? What’s Rise Against’s revolution? What’s the revolution? Is there a revolution that a bunch of people are gonna start coming out to their shows and make them really rich and a really big band?’ Because that’s been done a million fucking times before. Is the revolution that they’re gonna be poster boys for PETA while wearing Nike shoes? ‘Cause I don’t fucking buy into it, man. I think PETA’s full of shit. I think a lot of their politics are kinda opportunistic and self-serving personally.”

The Warped Tour copped plenty of flack during it’s time for a multitude of reasons, but there’s no denying that, despite its flaws, it was in many ways the lifeblood of the scene. Still, that didn’t stop the Lawrence Arms getting their Jarrod Alonge on and taking the piss out of the tour’s many downsides with “Warped Summer Extravaganza.” Calling out “big greed,” “thieves in their flip-flops and bro attitudes” and Warped founder Kevin Lyman, it’s safe to say the Lawrence Arms aren’t exactly big Warped fans. The fact that they were kicked off the tour in 2004 after pointing out what they deemed to be its flaws probably explains why.

Ever since Oli Sykes dedicated “Antivist” to Jona Weinhofen on stage in 2013, it’s been pretty clear who the band was addressing with the song. Bring Me split with Weinhofen earlier that year after the guitarist had revealed there’d been tension between himself and unnamed members, and given lyrics like “give me a break, you deluded, ill-informed, self-serving pricks / If you really believe in the words that you preach / Get off your screens and onto the streets,” it’s clear that those wounds hadn’t healed during the writing of <i>Sempiternal</i>.

We’re not totally sure who the “Richard, Clayton, John and Will” are that Awsten Knight is calling out on “TANTRUM,” but it’s pretty safe to assume they’ve done something to really piss off the Waterparks frontman (Genius speculates that they’re the love interests of Knight’s ex Ciara Hanna). Throwing shade at those who “tried to move on my missus” and “use my friends to try to get to me,” Knight appears jaded with figures around him in the industry, something he explained in more detail to Upset before the release of the band’s Entertainment LP:

“I’m going to make something up here, as an example: Say Gerard Way and I became friends; I wouldn’t be annoyed if I found out he didn’t like my band. But a lot of musicians don’t feel that way, because egos are a thing, even with cool people. As of right now, it’s not worth me getting into specific names… Watching those who are bigger than us start to implement things we’ve been doing is weird, because they already have the platform and audience. If people start to discover us later, we won’t get the credit for doing those things first – people will be like, ‘X bigger band is already doing that’.”

“You’re basically One Direction if they all had throat tattoos” is one of several savage burns inflicted by Bayside’s Anthony Raneri on ���Dancing Like An Idiot.” Taking aim at the “fake rebellion” perpetuated by many bands on the Warped Tour, Raneri explained to Billboard that the inspiration for the song came from his disdain toward those who take advantage of gullible fans for commercial gain: "These bands are just writing giant curses on T-shirts and selling it to a kid cause they know the kid is stupid enough to buy it," Raneri says. "You're telling them it's cool to buy a T-shirt to piss their parents off. There's nothing cool about that — that's mall rebellion. That's not real rebellion. I grew up liking The Smiths, liking Nirvana… I fucking hated Guns N' Roses. It was bullshit, misogynistic, it was fake rebellion — nothing is more corporate and commercialized."